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Comment by sus_007 | Hacker News Reader

> Feynman thought a moment and, much to our surprise, replied “Yes!” So every week for the next two years, my roommate and I joined dozens of other lucky students for a riveting and unforgettable afternoon with Dick* Feynman.

I don't know if that's meant to be a typo or an intentional name-calling ? Can somebody confirm ?

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Back before Nixon, Dick was a perfectly allowable shortening of a first name for [edit: mostly] white American men called Richard. Dick Feynman, Dick van Dyke, Dick Sargent, even Dick Cheney. Only since the 70s / 80s has it become a perjorative among younger generations, perhaps because of the Liar in Chief.

only white?

I think this is a fair question. I think it was predominantly white men. Never heard of a black man named Richard being called Dick. I think they usually use Rick instead.

Richard ~= Rick == Dick

One exception was black comedian, author, and activist Dick Gregory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Allen

I never got used to Richie Allen requesting that he be called Dick Allen https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/a/allendi01.shtml. I had no preference, but as a Phillies fan I had heard him referred to as Richie Allen a zillion times his first few years on the team so Dick Allen always clanged off my ears.

The name Richard has significantly declined in popularity over the past century, and use of Dick as a nickname for it has declined even more.

Its use as a term of contempt predates Nixon by about 300 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_(slang)

Here's an interesting article on the history of shortening of Richard, Dick in particular [1].

[1] http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2012/04/how-dick-cam...

Dick is short for Richard

I imagine during a regular class he was Professor Feynman, during Physics X he was just Dick Feynman.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypocorism#English

Good link, I didn't know that's what nicknames were called.

Nicknames seem to be a superset of hypocorisms, which are nicknames that are a shorter derivative or other modification of a person’s original name.

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