Mexican Gang Nicknames.

It also cuts down on the "Bob" issues.

"OK, Robert, Bob, and Bert..." "Which one am I again?" "Bob." "Oh, and him?" "Bert." "Oh, and him?" "Bert, Robert, beat the stupid out of Bob please."

Street names have a long and colorful history extending as far back as any record I know of. They conceal true identity, serve as book cover on which one can be judged, and provide a means of distinguishing one's self from civilians or junior members. They're very common for modern criminals, particularly organized professional criminals [read: gang members, mafioso, etc], and professional criminals working in teams with unfamiliar people.

"Mr. Pink?" "Yeah, it kinda got stuck to me. Hey, I was the only one that got away at the end, you know why? I DON'T TIP!"

You laugh, but one of my players' street name is Bob.

Get back to me when you have a player with the street name of 'Johnson', insisting on being called 'mister' as well...

One of the players in my group uses the name Cash Steel, aka. Cash.

- J.

I have no street names.

Typically you get given a street name, you don't pick it out. Louis Ferrante said it was to some extent a memory trick to keep people straight, as nobody in the mob wrote down anything. It was a lot easier to remember The Chin than Vincent Gigante or Joe Batters than Antonino Accardo. In the first case it's because he had a heck of a chin, in the other it was given to him by Capone for how good he was at hitting people with baseball bats.

Too easy.

Get someone to take one of the international Johnson names as their street name, like say, Monsieur Dupont (bonus points for being deprecated) or Herr Schmidt.

Actually, if I remember the anecdote right, "Chin" came from how his mother called him (similarly to Shemp Howard).

And does anyone ever really want to ask why someone is called Joker or Scarface? Seems like it would be detrimental to ones health.

You spend a lot of time being a criminal, do you?

Anyway, I don't suspect CanRay's what's on your maple-leaf-shaped birth certificate, so you've got at least one street name.

Shhh! Don't poke him when he's sad, he may get angry...

I just get sadder.

A lot of people around me about my age (pretty much everyone I don't interact with in formal surroundings on a regular basis) know each other by nicknames and not names. That includes my school and university classmates, my gaming group buddies, and assorted others. We often joke that when They come to arrest us, we won't even be able to point out the accomplices by names.

Yeah, but it's Russia. What with the name + otchestvo deal in formal environment. Among friends, nobody's gonna bother about that.
...while we're at it, where can I find a dictionary of the Russian criminal slang? I might need it sometime soon.

As a matter of fact, there is still a difference between addressing people by first name and by nickname... The usual form of address for equals is by first name.
Also, otchestvo translates to "patronymic name", which is as much a descriptive word.
As for criminal slang, well, you can find a workable version in Vice, I believe (though some of the words seem to be made up); as for network sources, you might imagine, I've never needed fenya translated to English...

Normal Russian will do, if I can't understand something in normal Russian (and I understand some stuff, I'm right around, remember? ), I can always use an online translator or dictionary. As for Vice... Between messed-up transliteration and made-up crap there's not much I could use.
And when my players finally meet the Vladivostok outfit, the more brash of two male PCs gets called "vorykhanchik" (li'l rooster in fenya).

I have a PC whose street name is 24th W.

He didn't really grasp the concept.

Hey, at least it's not 25th, he won't get in trouble with Triads with a name like that .

Minding that "rooster" ("petuh") is the slang term for passive homosexuals, with all the untouchable status belonging to that caste in prison brings, your players should have been worried :3
Can't say I've heard the word "vorykhanchik" ever, though.

As for dictionaries of vory sleng, if you read Russian, google is pretty generous when given queries like "словарь блатного жаргона" or "словарь фени". Most of them are decent, like this or this.

And if your Russian is as bad as my French?

That's even better! Thanks a lot, those two pages should be enough.
As for "vorykhan", it's in one of the fenya examples on Wikipedia. The Russian character I'm planning to introduce isn't exactly bright and he's something of a poser, so if he messes something up, it's no problem (basically, there are two brothers, Nikolai is the savvy businessman and Piotr is the muscle).
Feeding the second link into Google Translate gives pretty decent results, at least as far as automatic translators from Slavic languages do (hint: they usually don't).

Yeah well, the first link is more in-depth, delving into the subculture underlying the slang.
Also, as a matter of fact, I think I am going to include a small dictionary of vory slang into my alt.War draft, complementing the military jargon sidebar I've already written...