General Chat

Oh I couldn't agree with you more re the Mr and Mrs! Only recently I had reason to write to our MP - I addressed him as Dear Mr.........I signed and as usual after my name put Mrs in brackets but I received in return an epistle beginning Dear Ann! I have never met the man. The piece on mutation of names is very interesting as one often wonders how did that name derive from the original. Ann

If you are a grumpy old woman, Ann, then so am I and I was a grumpy little girl too! though I'm interested in how nicknames and shortened versions came about I have never wanted or liked my name shortened. When I was very small - less than 5 or 6 my parents had a pet name for me but that was different. Like you, I think it's rude to shorten someones name without permission. Call me old-fashioned, but I was taught to call someone 'Mr' 'Mrs' or 'Miss' until I was invited to call them by their first name. The current fashion of getting called by my first name and greeted like a long-lost friend even if I've only handed over my credit card to a stranger to pay for something throws me for a loop. Several times I've been embarrassed into thinking that I really must know this person but have somehow forgotten! The piece about the mutation of names was really interesting though.

One on my pet hates is the shortening of names, Bill, Jack, Harry etc I can cope with - but Baz, Pete, Vic/Tor for Victoria. In the south particularly one introduces oneself and if you use your full name - they will shorten it without a by-your-leave unless you make your feelings known. I think it is rude - what do you think? The names of myself and husband cannot be shortened but those of my son and g.dau can and they both get very uptight about it. Mine is lengthened sometimes by comparative strangers to Annie. I point out very politely it is Ann. Am I turning into a grumpy old woman? But then this practise always irked me even when I was young!!!! Ann

Nowadays we turn r into z as in Gazza for Garry, Baz for Barry - my son is at school with a Hazza (Harry)! Still puzzled about Bill for William. nell

Simon, Thanks for that I have saved it on my computer, found it very interesting. Pat x

Jack is derived from the Middle English diminutive of John, Jankin, which today we might say as "Johnkins" or "Johnnykins". The suffix -kin is what is known as hypocoristic, meaning, basically, that it is part of a pet name. Jankin was altered to Jackin, and that was back-formed to Jack. The Oxford Names Companion suggests that the back-formation occurred because people thought the suffix was -in instead of -kin, and -in was an Old French diminutive suffix. Now Jack is often used as a name on its own. It is not related to French Jacques, for which the English equivalent is James. Hank is also related to John. It was Hankin, the diminutive of Han, which was a short form of Jehan, a form of John. Instead of dropping the -kin to back-form another name, only the -in was dropped, as in Jack. Hank is also considered a pet form of Henry in the U.S. Of course, the well-known pet form of Henry is Harry, which is thought to have arisen from the French pronunciation of Henry, nasalizing the "n". Harry got its own pet form: Hal (remember Shakespeare's Henry IV?). Apparently the mutation from r to l is not uncommon. It happened also in the pet name for Sarah, Sally. Now what about Peg from Margaret? Where on earth did that P come from? Apparently that m to p change occurred in Molly and Polly, as well. Peg comes from Meg, which is an alteration of Mag (from which Maggie comes), a shortened form of Margaret. No one quite knows the reason for the m to p shift. A Celtic influence has been suggested, but with no evidence of other such shifts in Celtic. Molly, by the way, is actually a pet form of Mary, having been altered from Mally (that r to l shift again). Then there are Bill from William and Bob from Robert. What gives with the popularity of the initial letter B? In the case of Bill, which did not become a short form of William before the 19th century, it appears to be a Celtic influence -- when words with an initial W are borrowed into Gaelic, the W mutates to a B. As for Bob, no one is quite sure, but it is a later formation than other short forms of Robert such as Dob, Hob and Nob, which are medieval in origin. We will finish with the pet name for Richard which grows less common every year: Dick. Where did that one come from? The -ick part of it is not difficult to analyze -- look at Rick. Richard is pronounced Rickard in German, so it is easy to see whence the -ick arose. The D in Dick is thought to have come about when native English speakers, during the Middle Ages, had trouble trilling the initial R as would have been done in Norman French.

See below - taken from the 'Take our word for it' website, which researches the history of words etc. Simon