I don't think they said anything about this in The Big Lebowski, but I'd be curious if anyone knows.
I want the doctor to take your picture so I can look at you from inside as well.
In the Western context, Dude refers to Easterners and city slickers. This is different from the 1960's Dude. But Coen Bros may have been having some fun along those lines.
shareThe Dude in The Big Lebowski was based on a friend of the Coens' called Jeff Dowd.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Dowd
As others pointed out, Dude was a term for a city slicker, but also referred to someone who liked to look fancy. In the movie we see that Dude had a shiny hat band, had fancy grips on his pistols, had a really nice holster. He pawned them off, but Chance held onto them because of how nice they were and what it meant to Dude. That's probably where the nickname came from, To use a modern term he was going around with a bunch of bling.
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