Go right on ahead, call your Lucille ‘Lilly’. Hoping to use Eddie for Everett? Sure, that makes sense, I guess. Posey for Josephine? Not the most intuitive, but certainly there. Peggy for Margaret? Um….what? The mystery of nicknames such as Peggy, Dick, Bill, Jack, Chuck, Hank, Sadie, and more have haunted me for far too long, so I thought I’d do a little research and give my friends at the Name Warehouse some clarity about why exactly these names came into existence, although I’ll keep my opinions mostly absent. If you want an Opinions On post about using some of these nicknames that aren’t so intuitive at first glance, be sure to submit my Contact form and I’d be glad to do so! I’ve sorted these types of nicknames into several categories, since many of them stem from the same root principle or past short form trend, and will then proceed to evaluate the individual nicknames. But that’s enough explaining. Let’s solve this mystery!
Group 1: Prime Rhymes- Bill, Bob, Dick, and Peggy
This principle is actually quite simple. In the 1500s, England went through a naming faze in which the stylish baby naming trend was to swap out the first letter of a traditional nickname to make it novel and fresh.
For instance, with Bill for William. The common nickname Will was beginning to fizzle out, so replacing the W with a B gave the name a whole new life, creating the nicknames Bill and Billy for William. A very easy to see idea once it’s brought to your awareness. This same simple and easy method works for Robert to Rob to Bob and Richard to Rick to Dick as well, but it gets a couple steps more complex when it come to linking Peggy to Margaret. I’ll admit, I had no idea how to apply the “first letter switch” to Margaret and yet end up at Peggy. But take a look at the most common diminutive of Margaret: Maggie. Since some languages almost entirely graze over Rs, it makes sense why Maggie, and potentially Mag would become well known short forms. Still, that proved to be a dead end. But if we go back to Louisa May Alcott’s oldest March sister in the story Little Women, we find a Margaret with the fairly well known nickname Meg. Meg still makes plenty of sense, given that all of the letters and sounds are there and towards the front of the name, actually quite a conventional nickname. If you were to add the trademark nickname-y Y onto Meg, you get the adorable Meggy. And applying the 1500s trend? Boom! You get Peggy. I’m not saying it’s the most simplistic choice of nickname, but it does (after a lot of transformation) make some sort of sense.
Group 2: Rule-Bending Ending- Hank, Jack
Before this 1500s letter swap thing, another little naming trend was raging in early Medieval England, and it was that of the -kin ending. You’ve got to admit, it is cute. These aren’t real examples of actual names that would be given this ending, but just dream about a little baby nicknamed Avakin or Olikin… so sweet!
So take a name like Henry and put him through the Kin-ator. Poof! You get Henkin! So naturally, Henkin was molded into Henk. All it took was a couple vowel swaps or heavy accents and you arrive at the Hank we know and love today (not really, Henry in full has passed his glory days by a decade, and Hank was never truly revived). The same process leads to the result of getting Jack from the name John. You slap the -kin ending on there, making Jenkin, which, just like Henry, resulted in an eventual shortening of Jenkin to Jenk. From Jenk, accents and style preferences easily translate to the sensation of Jack, Jackson, Jaxtyn, and more that we adore to this day.
Group 3: Pronunciation Alteration- Molly, Sally
Ask a small child to say some word with an R in it, and you will likely be met with an L or W sound in place of it. R is an infamously difficult letter for many young children (young children who happen to be getting little siblings) to pronounce. So perhaps this Mary to Molly and Sarah to Sally phenomenon can be explained by some babbling tots. Mommy and Daddy bring baby Mary to her little brother for the first time, but instead of saying Mare-ee, he says Mawl-ee. It’s likely that Molly began that way: as a cute nickname for a child that siblings may have lended a helping hand in the creation of. And Molly eventually, with the 1500s favorite swapping first letter trick raging, became the lesser known Polly. So if you discover Aunt Polly was in fact Mary, now you know why! Sarah is a slightly harder one to defend. For one, Sarah’s A sound is very different from that of Sally. And while Mary in full ends in -y, making it easy for a toddler sister or brother to quickly turn Mary into Molly, Sarah ends in an -ah, not even close in sound to Sally. It’s possible that parents first used Sarie, which could’ve more easily been interpreted as Sally, but the stages in between Sarah and Sally have been cloudy, at least in my research.
Group 4: Mine Sign- Nellie, Ned, Nancy
Something on the topic that I found very fascinating was the way some versions of English used to replace what we would think of as “my” today with “mine,” making a sweet possessive pet name. For instance, “Mine Caroline” as opposed to “My Caroline,” with Caroline not applying to this rule whatsoever. With Ellen or Eleanor, you would get “Mine Ellen” or “Mine Ellie,” which then would begin to blend together and with other dialects of English settling on “my” instead of “mine,” the sounds blurred and the “my” stood apart from the now melted together “Mine Ellie,” which now, separated, made “My Nellie.”
This same occurrence happens with Ned, “Mine Ed” becoming “My Ned” as the “my” took over. But with Nancy from Anne? This theory gets slightly more far fetched. Not to fear though! “Mine Anne” easily went to “My Nan” over time, and Nan, as many nicknames do, got paired with a cutesy nickname ending: y. So we got Nanny, which I would not suggest for a modern day child due to the profession and the unfortunate rhyme of fanny. To further adorable-ify the nickname Nanny, which still feels very tied to Anne, the name morphed into Nansy, whose spelling and pronunciation was altered slightly somewhere along the way into Nancy, the nickname of Anne we have today, though I personally adore Annie as well.
That’s all for today, friends! I hope you enjoyed, and perhaps could share your theories and input on how these seemingly far-fetched nicknames rose to their widespread power. Farewell Name Warehouse!
Sincerely,
-Delphina Moon
コメント