How sweet it is for the proposal to nickname the new Canadian Screen Awards “the Candys,” in honour of John Candy, the late comic actor.

“It’s definitely strong,” said Helga Stephenson, the CEO of the Academy of Canadian Cinema & TV , who is in favour of giving the awards a popular name.

“In terms of all of the tweets and emails and messages that we’re getting, the Candys are running very strong. They’re running ahead.”

She said other popular nickname suggestions include the Angels (“because the statues look like they have wings”), the Pickfords (for Toronto’s original celebrity Mary Pickford), the Normans (for popular Canadian director Norman Jewison), the Screenies (an obvious contraction) and “a lot of Martys and Shorts” (people really liked Martin Short as Sunday’s show host).

“We’ll gather all the intel and review it and then it goes to the (Academy) board,” Stephenson said.

“We’ve got a whole year, but certainly I think by the time we go out for the second annual Canadian Screen Awards, it would be nice to have a name. I think it’s fun.”

Anyone who wants to submit a name suggestion, or to comment on “the Candys” or another proposal, is asked to tweet them to the Academy: @Academy_NET

There are also plans to put a poll on the Academy’s website: www.academy.ca .

The talk of a nickname like Oscar (Academy Awards) or Globe (Golden Globes) for the new CSA awards was on many minds all last week, especially during Sunday’s broadcast of the inaugural prize event.

Throughout the show, which CBC reports had 786,000 national viewers, or more than the combined audiences for the old Genie and Gemini award shows for Canadian film and television, respectively, it was evident presenters were having trouble announcing the winners.

They’d use some variation of “and the Screen Award goes to...,” which sounded awfully bland.

A couple of presenters even seemed to say, “and the Screen goes to,” which sounds like someone winning a new television set on a game show.

There were many names tossed out in the lead-up to the CSAs, many playing off the acronym, some of them better than others. The suggestion of “Caesars,” for example, is too close to France’s César Awards for film.

There was also “SeeSaws,” which is clever, but isn’t an up-and-down name like that just the epitome of wishy-washy?

Neither is as bad as “Huggies,” a suggestion based on the new statue’s golden embrace — would you really want an award that sounds as if it were based on a brand of diapers?

None brought more smiles than “the Candys,” which we first heard mentioned from the stage of the Metro Convention Centre during Thursday night’s pre-awards for the CSAs. The winning team from MuchMusic's Degrassi TV series suggested it.

“The Candys” has a nice ring to it, and it also serves to honour a popular entertainer who was a star of both TV (the groundbreaking comedy show SCTV ) and film (his many credits include The Silent Partner , a significant and successful 1978 Canadian thriller).

John Candy was beloved in both French and English Canada, so there would likely be no cultural bias against him. There’s already a #Candys Twitter hashtag going.

Think of all the sweet branding opportunities that “the Candys” offer, and branding is the name of the game these days.

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And John Candy, more than anybody, would surely have smiled at the thought of his well-padded figure being the basis for an awards statue.

So how about it, Canada?