W shortened pronunciations, as many speakers find the phrase "double-u double-u double-u" inconveniently long. In other Germanic languages, including German (but not Dutch, in which it is pronounced wé), its name is similar to that of English V . In many languages, its name literally means "double v": Portuguese "duplo vê", Spanish "doble ve" (though it can be spelled "uve doble"), French "double vé", Icelandic "tvöfalt vaff", Czech "dvojité vé", Finnish "kaksois-vee", etc. Former U.S. president George W. Bush was given the nickname "Dubya" after the colloquial pronunciation of his middle initial in Texas, where he spent much of his childhood.
Nickname other conventions; for example, Italian writes the nickname after the full name followed by "detto" 'called' (e.g., "Salvatore Schillaci detto Totò"), in Spanish the nickname is written in formal contexts at the end in quotes following "alias" (e.g. "Alfonso Tostado, alias «el Abulense»"), and Slovenian represents nicknames after a dash or hyphen (e.g., "Franc Rozman – Stane"). The latter may cause confusion because it resembles an English convention sometimes used for married and maiden names. In Viking societies, many people had "heiti", "viðrnefni", or "kenningarnöfn" (Old Norse terms for nicknames) which were used in addition to, or instead of the