Goal!

I had a speech impediment as a child, and not until I got to the first grade did any adult see fit to do anything about it, except to have me say things wrong for their amusement. 

I'm almost over it.

But when Pelé, widely regarded as the best soccer player everywhere any day, died over the holidays, I was interested to see where a guy born Edson Arantes do Nascimento came up with the mononym by which we knew him. 

When I found out The Rest Of The Story, I also learned that he really hated the nonsense nickname his schoolmates laid on him, so much so that he would fight the other kids who called him Pelé. 

The soccer idol's parents named him "Edson" because they got electricity in their home just before Thomas A. Edison died in 1931, and they wished to salute the "Wizard of Menlo Park," the name admirers hung on Edison (and which he did not dispute.) No reason is given for why the folks dropped the 'i' in Edison, though.

The story most often given was that young Edson's favorite soccer player was a guy named Bilé. But as a child, Edson had trouble pronouncing that name, and when he spoke of Bilé, it came out sounding like "Pelé," and you know how kids will torment each other over little things like that.

In later years, I suppose he came to accept the moniker, but he always felt it sounded like Portuguese baby talk, and he told an interviewer in 2019, "I had a happy childhood. My name is Edson, then they started calling me Pelé."

My advice to parents is that your children will get 100% of their Minimum Daily Requirement of teasing and torment from their peers, so please don't add to it by piling on.