Regarding Jack, from all the research that I have done on this, it's actually a hypocoristic form of John. In Old and Middle English, John had a pet form, "Jankin" ("-kin", while no longer productive, is still found in some words, such as "napkin", "pumpkin", etc.); later, the nasals fell off, leaving us with "Jack". On the other hand, the hypocoristic form of Jacob is "Jake".
Sometimes, Jack, due to phonetic similarity, is used as a translation of French "Jacques", even though it is more properly translated as James/Jacob.
If you have different information, please let me know. I have a vested interest in this, due to my own first name.
Right, you're correct to point out that Jack can be used for John too (maybe that's even more common than its being used for James!), but the story as to how that arose is a bit complicated.
I've never heard Jack used as a nickname for James, though the latter is related to Jacob, so I can see the sonic connection. (Shout out to the Scottish variant of Jimbo for James, which always amuses me.)
Yeah, I've seen that. It's a bit of a weird paragraph. The first sentence is quite accurate -- "From Middle English Jackin, Jankin, a popular pet form of John; rarely also an anglicized form of French Jacques (equivalent of Jacob and James)." And if you click through to the entry for "Jackin, Jankin", it sources these from the same root as "John". But then later it contradicts itself in the last sentence, saying it can be used for Jacob as well. However, there is no support for this, as far as I can tell.
I'll reproduce the quote here for ease of reference:
> [Jack], the commonest pet-name for John, has caused a good deal of difficulty owing to the natural assumption that it must be derived from the French Jacques and should therefore logically represent James rather than John. The problem was cleared up by E. W. B. Nicholson in a little book entitled The Pedigree of Jack and of Various Allied Names (1892). He showed that there is no recorded instance of Jack, Jak, Jacke, or Jakke ever being used to represent Jacques or James, and that no statement in favor of the French connexion has been produced from any early writer. He then proceeded to elucidate and illustrate with examples the development of Johannes [the standard Latin nominative form] to Jehan [the standard Old and Middle French oblique form] and Jan [the standard Middle Dutch form], whence, by addition of the common suffix -kin [a uniquely English suffix], we get Jankin, which as a result of French nasalization becomes Jackin [this is the same nasalization that gets us Harry from Henry], and was finally shortened to Jack. There was a similar development from Jon to Jock (the Scottish form of the name).
I don't think it is a "contradiction", per se, to have the same result of a truncating derivative of different nouns. Also, of course, this needn't be an early process, so the fact that Nicholson couldn't find early evidence means little: forming such nicknames is alive and well. (Daenerys became Dany - to my knowledge, pronounced "Dainy" - almost instantly.)
I wonder if Jacob was always universally pronounced Jay-cob (which leads to Jake); if "Jackob"-style pronunciation existed at some point, getting Jack from that is trivial.
Fair point! So you're proposing that it has multiple sources that merged together? Could be.
I guess my view is colored from my own experience as well, since I have never met a Jacob who goes by Jack, but I have met plenty of Johns who go by Jack.
Also, I'm even more biased, because etymologically, if my name comes from John, then I'm "son of God's grace", which is a lot better than the enigma that is the origin of "Jacob".
Well, of course, but this particular Jack/Jake problem is rather English-specific. (Broader CVC-based hypocoristics are found in other languages, but the devil here is in details.)
Wondering how we get Libby for Elizabeth and Dick for Richard. My name, Jennifer, was uber-popular in America in the 80s, so every school class contained multiple Jennifers, and each needed a different nickname or moniker to distinguish them. As a child, I was the “Jenny” in the class. Today in my university department, my colleague is “Jen,” while I am “Jennifer” to separate us. But in college my nickname was more unusual: “Iffer.”
The trick is that, with nicknames, we still have a lot of conventional pairings that are holdovers from an earlier era, where the rules were different. The medieval "change the initial letter" rule still persists in "Robert" => "Bob" and "Richard" to "Rick." The change of "ch" to "ck" is interesting though. I don't know the answer, but I'd be curious to learn if anyone else has looked into it!
A friend of mine must be about your age. ALL the Jennifers in her class. When one of them turned 18 she contemplated changing it to the original-ish "Guinevere" but her parents pointed out that at least everyone knows how to spell Jennifer, and did she really want to spend so much time for the rest of her life spelling it out? No.
I've never met a Richard under 60 who goes by "Dick" for obvious reasons. They're all "Rich" or "Rick".
Vowels before "r" in English are weird. The following "r" tends to warp them a bit: so it's possible that people think or thought the vowel in "Florence" was actually the long "o" in "Flo" that had been warped by the "r" to the vowel we have in "Florence." But otherwise it's strange because we'd expect "Flor" as the hypocoristic form!
It's interesting the number of times I get asked if my name, Jamie, is "short" for James! According to my mother, as a precocious 5-year old, if anybody called me James my reply would be "My name's not James, it's Jamie"
I think -sky is another diminutive suffix like -y and the others. But, interestingly, it attaches to the same base "Ped" as the other diminutive suffixes would.
UK English also has a tradition of forming nicknames for names that start with a vowel by putting N before the first syllable. Probably best known are Nell for Ellen or Eleanor, and Ned for Edward or Edmund, but also Oliver Twist is often called "Noll."
Amongst my closest friends we invented our own nicknaming rule.
1st syllable + man.
Stuman for Stuart
Joshman for Joshua
Danman for Daniel
Also remember once being on the school bus and one poetic kid at the back was making everyone's names into -ie or -y nicknames, pretty much following the intuitive rules above. However, he got completely stuck on one South African girl, Margot (French pronunciation). Thinking for a bit, he just blurted out, "Magz!"
I once knew a Sebastian who was called Bass. And I''ve read Tori as a nickname for Victoria. So the unstressed syllable idea is not completely limited to vowels.
I've noticed the children today are far less likely to be Robbie or Billy or Jimmy - they all seem to be Robert, William or James. I wonder if that is due to the proliferation of unique/unusual names these days and the comparative decline of the old standards like John, Robert, William, etc.., which are now the "unusual" names in some areas.
Back when every Tom, Dick and Harry was named Thomas, Richard, or Henry, there was more of a need to come up with some variations. If you had five Elizabeths in your extended family, it was probably a lot easier to figure out which one you were talking about if they went by Lizzie, Libby, Beth, Betty and Betsy respectively.
I think the practice of naming a child after a close relative has declined a lot as well. My best friend from childhood was named Lizzie, her mom was Betsy and her grandmother was Betty; my Hungarian grandmother was Zsusza, my aunt was Sue, and my cousin was Susie. You don't see that so much these days.
It's funny because I think this is a US phenomenon, whereas in the UK it's the opposite: lots of children called Harry, Freddie, Molly or Millie and the longer, more traditional versions are much rarer.
My grandson is Jonathan, and he went by that name until he got to third grade (8 years old). He came home and told his parents that he wanted to be called Johnny. I think something at school — a teacher? a cool kid? — started it and he's all on board.
Well, the obvious rule for names like Elizabeth is that we drop the unstressed syllable. But that doesn’t work for Sebastian or Victoria. So starting with a vowel is key, like Elaine or Alexis (Laney or Lexy).
But where did Eliza with a long “i” come from?? Betsy is also pretty mysterious.
Suz is probably my preferred nickname, though it's more a spoken thing than something I would ever write down. I would also spell it that way rather than with the e.
Regarding Jack, from all the research that I have done on this, it's actually a hypocoristic form of John. In Old and Middle English, John had a pet form, "Jankin" ("-kin", while no longer productive, is still found in some words, such as "napkin", "pumpkin", etc.); later, the nasals fell off, leaving us with "Jack". On the other hand, the hypocoristic form of Jacob is "Jake".
Sometimes, Jack, due to phonetic similarity, is used as a translation of French "Jacques", even though it is more properly translated as James/Jacob.
If you have different information, please let me know. I have a vested interest in this, due to my own first name.
Right, you're correct to point out that Jack can be used for John too (maybe that's even more common than its being used for James!), but the story as to how that arose is a bit complicated.
Indeed, it seems to be. Dmitri's proposal in the thread below seems quite promising.
Yes I agree. Jim for James; Jack for John.
I've never heard Jack used as a nickname for James, though the latter is related to Jacob, so I can see the sonic connection. (Shout out to the Scottish variant of Jimbo for James, which always amuses me.)
For what it's worth, Wiktionary lists all three etymologies: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Jack#Etymology
Yeah, I've seen that. It's a bit of a weird paragraph. The first sentence is quite accurate -- "From Middle English Jackin, Jankin, a popular pet form of John; rarely also an anglicized form of French Jacques (equivalent of Jacob and James)." And if you click through to the entry for "Jackin, Jankin", it sources these from the same root as "John". But then later it contradicts itself in the last sentence, saying it can be used for Jacob as well. However, there is no support for this, as far as I can tell.
This article quotes Withycombe: https://dmnes.wordpress.com/2017/01/28/why-is-jack-a-nickname-of-john/
I'll reproduce the quote here for ease of reference:
> [Jack], the commonest pet-name for John, has caused a good deal of difficulty owing to the natural assumption that it must be derived from the French Jacques and should therefore logically represent James rather than John. The problem was cleared up by E. W. B. Nicholson in a little book entitled The Pedigree of Jack and of Various Allied Names (1892). He showed that there is no recorded instance of Jack, Jak, Jacke, or Jakke ever being used to represent Jacques or James, and that no statement in favor of the French connexion has been produced from any early writer. He then proceeded to elucidate and illustrate with examples the development of Johannes [the standard Latin nominative form] to Jehan [the standard Old and Middle French oblique form] and Jan [the standard Middle Dutch form], whence, by addition of the common suffix -kin [a uniquely English suffix], we get Jankin, which as a result of French nasalization becomes Jackin [this is the same nasalization that gets us Harry from Henry], and was finally shortened to Jack. There was a similar development from Jon to Jock (the Scottish form of the name).
I don't think it is a "contradiction", per se, to have the same result of a truncating derivative of different nouns. Also, of course, this needn't be an early process, so the fact that Nicholson couldn't find early evidence means little: forming such nicknames is alive and well. (Daenerys became Dany - to my knowledge, pronounced "Dainy" - almost instantly.)
I wonder if Jacob was always universally pronounced Jay-cob (which leads to Jake); if "Jackob"-style pronunciation existed at some point, getting Jack from that is trivial.
Fair point! So you're proposing that it has multiple sources that merged together? Could be.
I guess my view is colored from my own experience as well, since I have never met a Jacob who goes by Jack, but I have met plenty of Johns who go by Jack.
Also, I'm even more biased, because etymologically, if my name comes from John, then I'm "son of God's grace", which is a lot better than the enigma that is the origin of "Jacob".
All the Jacks I've ever met are formally John, like my grandfather and uncle, and lots of others.
All the Jacobs I've known who used a nickname go by Jake.
In most European languages, Jacob isn’t pronounced with our long “a” because of course they don’t really use a long “a”.
Well, of course, but this particular Jack/Jake problem is rather English-specific. (Broader CVC-based hypocoristics are found in other languages, but the devil here is in details.)
Sure, I just meant we might get the short “a” in Jack from immigrants whose native language wasn’t English.
Wondering how we get Libby for Elizabeth and Dick for Richard. My name, Jennifer, was uber-popular in America in the 80s, so every school class contained multiple Jennifers, and each needed a different nickname or moniker to distinguish them. As a child, I was the “Jenny” in the class. Today in my university department, my colleague is “Jen,” while I am “Jennifer” to separate us. But in college my nickname was more unusual: “Iffer.”
P.s. Libby is probably a result of tiny girls not being able to pronounce their name of Lizzy or Lisbeth - see also QEII being called Lilibet
I had a friend Jennifer in high school that went by 'Jiffer', because our mutual friend Jenny was *not* a Jennifer, so we nicknamed her Jen.
You may already know that here in Scotland Jenny is a nickname for Janet. My own grandmother was known as Jenny. I have no idea how this came about!
The trick is that, with nicknames, we still have a lot of conventional pairings that are holdovers from an earlier era, where the rules were different. The medieval "change the initial letter" rule still persists in "Robert" => "Bob" and "Richard" to "Rick." The change of "ch" to "ck" is interesting though. I don't know the answer, but I'd be curious to learn if anyone else has looked into it!
A friend of mine must be about your age. ALL the Jennifers in her class. When one of them turned 18 she contemplated changing it to the original-ish "Guinevere" but her parents pointed out that at least everyone knows how to spell Jennifer, and did she really want to spend so much time for the rest of her life spelling it out? No.
I've never met a Richard under 60 who goes by "Dick" for obvious reasons. They're all "Rich" or "Rick".
An exception would be Flo for Florence, if I'm understanding correctly? In that case the vowel sound is changed slightly to make it sound ok.
Vowels before "r" in English are weird. The following "r" tends to warp them a bit: so it's possible that people think or thought the vowel in "Florence" was actually the long "o" in "Flo" that had been warped by the "r" to the vowel we have in "Florence." But otherwise it's strange because we'd expect "Flor" as the hypocoristic form!
Florrie is a nickname.
It's interesting the number of times I get asked if my name, Jamie, is "short" for James! According to my mother, as a precocious 5-year old, if anybody called me James my reply would be "My name's not James, it's Jamie"
Jack common for John too, tho in my family, abundant with Johns, one nephew became Josh and my son became Johnno or John John.
G’son Levon is often Lee or LeeLee. But the nickname RobinBobbin certainly longer than g’kids name, Robin
Jack is short for John.
Yes, that too! There's a good discussion of this question elsewhere in the comments: https://www.deadlanguagesociety.com/p/the-hidden-logic-of-nicknames/comment/161868874
So I have a few nicknames, among them Shar (pronounced Share), Sharry, and Ped. All quite ordinary as it turns out.
But the next-level of (what? diminution? affection? derivation?) for Ped would not be Peddy, ISTM, but rather Pedsky. Why is that, I wonder?
I think -sky is another diminutive suffix like -y and the others. But, interestingly, it attaches to the same base "Ped" as the other diminutive suffixes would.
UK English also has a tradition of forming nicknames for names that start with a vowel by putting N before the first syllable. Probably best known are Nell for Ellen or Eleanor, and Ned for Edward or Edmund, but also Oliver Twist is often called "Noll."
Amongst my closest friends we invented our own nicknaming rule.
1st syllable + man.
Stuman for Stuart
Joshman for Joshua
Danman for Daniel
Also remember once being on the school bus and one poetic kid at the back was making everyone's names into -ie or -y nicknames, pretty much following the intuitive rules above. However, he got completely stuck on one South African girl, Margot (French pronunciation). Thinking for a bit, he just blurted out, "Magz!"
Everyone laughed, including Margot!
I once knew a Sebastian who was called Bass. And I''ve read Tori as a nickname for Victoria. So the unstressed syllable idea is not completely limited to vowels.
I've noticed the children today are far less likely to be Robbie or Billy or Jimmy - they all seem to be Robert, William or James. I wonder if that is due to the proliferation of unique/unusual names these days and the comparative decline of the old standards like John, Robert, William, etc.., which are now the "unusual" names in some areas.
Back when every Tom, Dick and Harry was named Thomas, Richard, or Henry, there was more of a need to come up with some variations. If you had five Elizabeths in your extended family, it was probably a lot easier to figure out which one you were talking about if they went by Lizzie, Libby, Beth, Betty and Betsy respectively.
I think the practice of naming a child after a close relative has declined a lot as well. My best friend from childhood was named Lizzie, her mom was Betsy and her grandmother was Betty; my Hungarian grandmother was Zsusza, my aunt was Sue, and my cousin was Susie. You don't see that so much these days.
It's funny because I think this is a US phenomenon, whereas in the UK it's the opposite: lots of children called Harry, Freddie, Molly or Millie and the longer, more traditional versions are much rarer.
I have seen that as well - names that used to be nicknames, such as Molly, Jack, or Hank, are more often given names on their own now.
My grandson is Jonathan, and he went by that name until he got to third grade (8 years old). He came home and told his parents that he wanted to be called Johnny. I think something at school — a teacher? a cool kid? — started it and he's all on board.
Drew is a nickname for Andrew, despite the stress being on 'An'.
Nathan seems a shortening of both Jonathan and Nathaniel. Is there some interesting etymology there?
from an episode of Seinfeld . . . it's not Suze, it's Susie!
Well, the obvious rule for names like Elizabeth is that we drop the unstressed syllable. But that doesn’t work for Sebastian or Victoria. So starting with a vowel is key, like Elaine or Alexis (Laney or Lexy).
But where did Eliza with a long “i” come from?? Betsy is also pretty mysterious.
Some Victorias go by Tori.
Is *that* where Tori came from? I started seeing that name crop up a while back but never knew.
Ah, I see Tori Spelling from 90210 is more formally Victoria. How about that?
Yep!
I'd guess that "Betsy" came from Elizabeth > Beth > Betty > Betsy.
Yes. A long evolution, but it’s a venerable name. And I guess Bess is part of that chain somewhere.
I work with a Suze, though she spells it Suz, so that one does exist in the wild.
Investment guru Suze Orman.
Suz is probably my preferred nickname, though it's more a spoken thing than something I would ever write down. I would also spell it that way rather than with the e.
I've met a Sooz.
While writing this - https://open.substack.com/pub/njandrews/p/yes-pharaohs-had-nicknames?r=1i21vf&utm_medium=ios I remembered reading your article on nicknames and it made me wonder if you might add insights to my observations? Only if it is of interest to you, of course.