‘What’s in a name? The nicknames and abbreviations that make me go ‘huh?”

Isn’t it funny, the way people always seem to want to change or abbreviate, either their own name, or the name of a friend or associate. How Charles are known to everyone as ‘Chas’ or ‘Chuck’? Or how Elizabeths are more often than not called ‘Liz’.

It seems that about the only way to avoid having your name shortened by someone is to have such a short one that it’s just not possible to shorten it. Take ‘John’ for instance, there’s really not a lot you can do about that, except of course, change it completely — I know a lot of John’s who are much better known to one and all as ‘Jack’, though why I have no idea.

Then of course there are the female equivalents which can’t be shortened, like Ann. I should say that was a pretty safe one, no matter how hard you tried, ‘Aaah’ perhaps — no, that’s just plain silly, so I really think the Ann’s of this world are fairly safe from abbreviation.

There are lots of Brian’s called ‘Bri’ (I’m one of them), Harold’s known as ‘Harry’ and Peter’s who answer to ‘Pete’, while the girls have to live with ‘Jan’ when they were christened Janet or Janice, and ‘Mandy’ who started her life as an Amanda, plus ‘Glad’ who was originally Gladys. One could go on almost ad infinitum, listing all the names which get abbreviated in this way, if it contains more than four letters, you can bet your bottom dollar that someone will have thought up an abbreviation for it.

Of course, there is another side to this mystery too — that is the way some names get changed pretty well completely. Let’s take an easy one first, William, now how does that get to be ‘Bill’? I know there is a sound similarity between the two, but why ‘Bill’? Why not ‘Mill’, or ‘Hill’? There are many initial letters that could have been chosen, so why a ‘B’?

Another one, slightly murkier than Bill, is the replacement for ‘Richard’, which is ‘Dick’, it takes a much longer bow to see where that one came from, or the one I mentioned in the first paragraph of this blog, a John being called ‘Jack’! And to pick just one or two for the ladies, there’s ‘Veronica’, often known as ‘Vera’ and ‘Violet’, called ‘Letty’. And of course there’s that good old fashioned nickname for ‘Margaret’, which for some mysterious reason is ‘Peggy’! (How on earth did they arrive at that? I got the name ‘Ben’ while working in Bristol in the 1950s, because my surname is Lee and at the time there was a very famous pop singer by the name of Benny Lee, who sang with the Billy Cotton Band. That name has stuck with me during the ensuing 60 years — even my wife Jacqui always calls me Ben, though I haven’t told many people about it here in Australia, so most people now know me as simply ‘Brian’.

Then there are the names with no connection to the real person’s name at all, but relate to their colouring or their professions. They are Frederick ‘Chalky’ White, for obvious reasons, John ‘Red’ Smith because of his hair colour, or James ‘Basher’ Tomkins, who is a boxer, and Michael ‘Stalky’ Johnson who is nearly seven feet tall.

Maureen ‘Scarlet’ O’Hara got her nickname, like the invented John Smith above, because of the rich colouring of her hair, while the opposite was applied to ‘Little John’ of Robin Hood fame, because he was such a large man.

It seems we all have a great need to call each other, especially close friends, by one of these abbreviations, changes or descriptives, perhaps that is the root cause of it, it’s a mark of your friendship to have nicknames for those close to you. In other words, a nickname is a sort of term of endearment, more often used I have found, by men, rather than women. Women have more sense than to indulge in such tom-foolery!

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