Infinite Summer

For at least a couple of characters there are multiple names: James Incandenza, Himself, The Mad Stork, The Sad Stork, JOI; Joelle van Dyne, P.G.O.A.T., Madame Psychosis. This seems to go beyond simple nicknames. It reminds me both of Russian literature, where characters are known by full names, patronymics or diminutives depending on who's addressing them and also the Greek gods, who were sometimes known by different names and epithets depending on what aspect of their nature was being invoked. The multiple names in IJ seem to serve all of these purposes (and maybe more).

The E.T.A. students have some nicknames for each other but that's not quite at the same level.

Aside from J.O.I. and Joelle, one of the major offenders is Ortho - at various points he's called Ortho, Ortho Stice, Stice, Ortho "The Darkness" Stice, The Darkness, Orth, Dark, etc. Granted, they're all variations on a theme, but it's a LOT of variations.

The nickname that's baffled me the most so far (and since it references Endnote 123 from page 323, I can finally bring it up), is Pemulis referring to Hal as "Inc." Am I wrong, or is he the only person who does so? In his dictation to Hal about the Eschaton game (if you can call it that), Pemulis lengthens the nickname to "Inculator," but I think that's just a sly schoolchum affectation he makes while asking Hal to pass him their duBois. At any rate, I can't find a definition for the word "inculator" anywhere.

If there is such a program, it is a dead cert that it has exactly 12 steps...

Just another possibility for "inculator". Ok, it is inspired to Incandenza, but deformed to obtain a quite crude effect. In italian (the original country of the Incandenza) "inculare" means "to sodomize" (like french: enculer). For instance the Italian translator kept this meaning.

Notice that this is not really inappropriate. We are just near PEEMSTER and HALSADICK, and there is the
funny paragraph: "Let d be any constant, for computational reasons the closer to 1 the better, so like let d be the size of Hal's Unit.
Hal Incandenza's Addendum: In meters."

Finally, there is a quite open ambiguity in the full sentence: "Why don't you just pass that certain item back on over here, Inculator."

I think that "certain item" was meant to be a pretty straightforward reference to pipe/bong/other paraphenalia that these two tend to be accompanied by.

Part of the fun of Infinite Jest is in how much even normal things can seem to take on ambiguity.