QotD: What My Name Means - The origin of "Snowball"

What does your name mean and why did your parents choose it for you? 
Submitted by mommy2two.

Clerks

Okay, well I'm going to answer this a different way.  I'm going to explain my actual nickname instead of how I got my real name.

Obviously with a name like Snowball it seems like a harmless name.  At first I thought it was.  I was in the 6th Grade, roughly around 1992, I was sick and tired of all the "albino" jokes I was receiving when I was a kid.  Trust me, I've heard them all.  So I was fed up.  I wanted a name that I could be happy with and have people call me. 

I came up with several names.  Snowman, Q-Tip, Snowflake, and others.  I kind of liked the whole, White is pure as snow idea.  But when I came up with the nickname Snowball, I had this kind of cartoon picture in my head of this bad ass snowball who had arms and legs and was kicking butt in a snowball fight.  To this day I have yet to see an actual image like that, but I hope someone out there has made something like that, as I imagined when I was a kid.  If anyone knows of such a picture, please let me know.

Anyway, it wasn't until a few years ago, when I had gotten obviously much older that I really used it fully as a nickname.  In high school I was known mainly as Snowball.  Some people can only remember me as Snowball, and yet they don't even remember my actual name.  That's how often people referred me as Snowball.

Then I graduated high school and when I would talk to people and say my nickname was Snowball, they automatically ask, "Oh from Clerks?"

No.

No.

And No.

Yes, I have seen Clerks.  And yes I know that Snowball is used in a very bad way.  But that is not the reason why I have the name.  I like Clerks, don't get me wrong.  Kevin Smith did make a hilarious movie, and I like everything he does.

But please if you're out there and you snicker each time you hear my precious nickname being mentioned.  Please remind them, I had that name before Clerks ever came out, and I don't care if the "very bad" term it's used for was around longer.  To a 6th Grader it was mine, and it was good.

Anyway, that's it.  I'm done.

As always, I remain, obediently yours...

Toodles!

Steve "SNOWBALL" Saylor

P.S.  Oh, and yes I also know about Snowball II from the Simpsons.  So you can stop referencing that too.