I took the Chapman bit to mean ‘gooner’ in the older “being a goon” sense: eccentric/fool/prankster, not that it was a fully separate formal nickname origin. But yeah, the article doesn’t really explain why Chapman was called that, so it’s more folklore than etymology. The better answer is probably that Gooners evolved as wordplay from Gunners.
I took the Chapman bit to mean ‘gooner’ in the older “being a goon” sense: eccentric/fool/prankster, not that it was a fully separate formal nickname origin. But yeah, the article doesn’t really explain why Chapman was called that, so it’s more folklore than etymology. The better answer is probably that Gooners evolved as wordplay from Gunners.
Yeah wasn’t rhyming slang a big thing in London? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhyming_slang. It’s not really a rhyme, but the same kind a wordplay.