At this point I think it may be question whether the problem lies with English itself. Such an error prone language.
“a nickname” was originally “an ekename” (eke being an old English word meaning also)
conversely, “an apron” was originally “a napron.”
English is a weird agglomeration of different languages, with things like the application of French-style plurals (-s) to Anglo-Saxon words (but not always, cf. ox -> oxen) and a generally Germanic syntax with a large fraction of Romance root words.
As part of my Dewey Decimal Project¹ https://www.dahosek.com/category/dewey-decimal-project/ I ended up reading some interesting books on English linguistics (scroll down to the 500s for those).
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1. I’m not quite done. I have two read books to blog about before I read the last book in the series which will be the book my local library has at its highest Dewey Decimal call number. Alas, it's not a 999 Extraterrestial Worlds book, but I think it's either Antarctica or Australia (I looked when I first started on this seven years ago, but I've since forgotten).