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I just heard about “Dick” being a nickname for “Richard” but as a non native English speaker i can not see the reason behind that…

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English does a lot of shorting, rhyming nicknames. We even like to lengthen the rhyming part back out to be even more confusing.

• Richard -> Rick -> Dick

• William -> Will -> Bill -> Billy

• Robert -> Rob -> Bob -> Bobby

• Margaret -> Meg -> Peg -> Peggy

• Edward -> Ed -> Ned | Ted -> Teddy

A lot of common names also have just a variant which barely seems related:

• Henry -> Harry

• John -> Jack

• James -> Jim

And you'll have to Google for all the nicknames for "Elizabeth" because I can't remember them all.

What we lack for creativity in names themselves, we make up for with creative nicknames because every other kid is called Elizabeth.

To add on to what you said, the rhyming is usually in the direction of easier sounds for children to make. Kids will struggle with R a lot more than D, so you get Richard -> Rick -> Dick but not David -> Dave -> Rave, for example.

Now all I can think is how there was a Janet in my family and none of us children could say her name, so she became Janice to us forever even as adults.

And somehow, Mary -> Polly. This is "lambdacism" apparently.

mary to molly to Polly? I can kinda see the molly step at least

It's Mary -> Molly-> Polly, which makes slightly more sense

Thanks. I always assumed that Polly was a diminutive of Pauline.

Hank and Hal are also short for Henry.

There are also a lot of nicknames for Margaret (Marge, Madge, Maggie, etc), I guess because there just aren't nearly as many biblical names for women/girls so people wanted to get creative.

Jack is also used for James, since it is the equivalent of Jacques in French and Giacomo in Italian. The apostle was actually called Yakov, after Jacob, which is the root of all those names.

Also the r->z substitution. Charles -> Chaz. Barry -> Baz. Jeremy -> Jez. Caroline -> Caz. etc etc

My initial thought was that in certain English accents, including some from the northern parts of the UK, the r is "flapped" or "tapped" similar to an r in Spanish. With a tapped r, the pronunciation of "Rick" is much closer to that of "Dick".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunciation_of_English_/r/#V...

However, further research has turned up that rhyming nicknames have been a thing going back centuries and "Dick" is one among many.

https://www.thrillist.com/news/nation/how-did-dick-become-sh...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH1NAwwKtcg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_(nickname)

If it's not obvious: "Dick" was a nickname for Richard long, long before it became a slang word for "penis".

And the newer meaning is probably why almost no Richards go by "Dick" anymore.

My wife had an elementary school teacher Richard Weiner who went by Dick. You can't make these things up.

Richard Arthur Assman got more than his 15 minutes of fame due to his name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Assman

No-one believes that I went to school with someone called Ben Deacock, but it’s true.

I still laugh occasionally when I remember an army career video I saw in school which featured (among other officers) a "Major Richard Head".

Major Dick Head must have been praying for a promotion to Lt Colonel.

My friend knew a Michael "Don't call me Mike" Hunt.

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

Yes, Dick has been a nickname for Richard for about 800 years but only got its modern slang meaning in probably late-19th or early 20th century. It seems to have come out of the British military from the phrase "Tom, Dick, and Harry", which were such common names that the phrase meant every ordinary man. (Tommy was already slang for "British soldier".) And from there, one more evolutionary step for mankind....

WW1 coined “Jerry” for a German soldier, thus giving us Tom and Jerry

Pronunciations have changed with literacy and dialect. (ich) sounded like (aick) in proto-Germanic, making Richard phonetically more similar to modern Ricardo.

Rhymes are also popular for nicknames, especially if you've got a village full of people with the same name, also especially if the rhyme sounds like something else. Ryke(r)/Rick/Rickon, Dyke/Deek/'Deacon'/Dick, Hyke... that's more of a surname, and perhaps more common to people who encountered the Scandinavians.

There's also Richert, Ricard, and Ricart from the same root. Modern 'Richard' is softer (ich), almost like (ish), and may have been pronounced like Rishard in places before the modern compromise.

Rhyming nicknames are common.

See also: "Bill" being a common nickname for "William" (far more common, in fact, than "Will").

I know a few Williams (I am also one myself) and they all go by Will. I do know a guy whose middle name is William and he goes by Billy. I do not personally know anyone who goes by Bill.

I’ve only ever been called Bill once and that was by a US Border Agent which leads me to suspect this is a regional thing (the commonality, not the validity). For clarity, I am in the UK.

Bill Clinton, Bill Nighy, Bill Gates, Bill Cosby, Bill Nye.

Other than Nighy, maybe it's just more of an American thing?

I suspect that is the case, yeah. I can think of maybe 3 other (famous) Bills from the UK but a lot more from the US.

Bill Bailey, Bill Oddie, and Bill Shankly - alas I don’t know any of them personally!

Oh man, Bill Bailey would certainly be a treat to get to know!

By all accounts.

Absolutely! Nearest I have been is seeing him perform live, still a great pleasure; the man is a comic genius.

(If you haven't watched it, he made a short series called "Perfect Pub Walks with Bill Bailey" which was great -- I'd highly recommend if you're a fan. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt31434018/)

Bill Shakespeare, Bill Nighy, Billy Brag, Billy Connolly, Billy Cotton, Bill Drummond, Bill and Ben, Portland Bill?

From my view (in the US), it seems mostly generational.

My grandfather William went by Bill, but most of the Williams in my own generation go by Will. In particular if they're the son of a Bill, they use the different nickname. I wonder if their sons will go back to Bill.

I've seen this alternate nickname scheme in a family that reused women's names down the line, with "Katherine" and "Elizabeth" taking turns and wearing nicknames left and right. Grandma was Katherine, grand-aunt was Eliza, mom was Kate, aunt was Beth, daughters were Kitty and Libby...

> I've seen this alternate nickname scheme in a family that reused women's names down the line

I've been doing a smidge of genealogy lately, and my dad's side of the family is full of this kind of stuff. They have a tradition of first son takes dad's dad's name, first daughter takes dad's mom's name, second son takes dad's uncle's name, etc. Not a lot of middle names. My great grandmother's maiden name is the exact same as her mother's married name, although some records have a shortened form, mostly for my GGM, but sometimes for my GM. For my kid, we tried to look around and pick a name that wasn't super common, but also not unique; I think we did well with the whole name, but there were three of his first name in kindergarten; thankfully with different last names, but the initial of their last names were sequential!

My father was William and was often called Willy as a kid but went by Bill among friends as an adult.

I think it’s partially a generational thing. I know a couple of “Bill”s my age but couldn’t count the “Will”s.

My father and older age though there’s not one person I know called “Will” but I know countless “Bill”s

Charles => Chuck in the same head scratching reason to me as well

I once had a coworker try to convince me that Chuck was short for William.

(His full name was William Charles Lastname, and he went by Chuck.)

That sounds like one of the names where "the third" rolls off naturally. I've seen a lot of "juniors" where the senior goes by the first name while junior goes by the middle name.

How parents refer to their kids is an interesting little view into their world

I think he was a junior. I don't work with him any more, though, so I can't ask.

That is my case, same name as my father(no Jr however), so the family called me by my middle name, Which you get used to, to the point where I won't recognize it if called by given name. It is a bit confusing as I have to be mindful to use the correct name when doing government tasks.

Actually Chuck is fascinating: only found in America. It’s easier to pronounce in Chinese and a lot of immigrant Charles landed first in Chinatown.

A lot of old nicknames don't really make a lot of sense at first glance. The short answer is rhyming slang, and the long answer is there simply used to be a lot less names in English that were acceptable and commonly used. So, for instance, Richard being shortened to "Rick" is pretty straightforward, but you probably knew several Richards and Ricks, and you want to call them different names. So instead of Rick, you call them by a rhyming nickname, in this case "Dick." The same is true of "Rob" being short for "Robert," but "Bob" was too. Because "Bob" rhymes with "Rob".

One of the oddest in this vein is Peggy, which is short for Margaret. Because Margaret would get shortened to Meg, and then rhymed with Peg, and then somehow lengthened back again to Peggy. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'd take Peggy over "Gretchen", which is similarly a nickname for Margaret ("-gret" / Greta + "-chen", the German diminutive suffix, thus meaning "little Margaret").

It might work in German, but to the English ear it sounds horrible for a little girl's name.

https://tenor.com/view/gretchen-weiners-gretchen-lacey-chabe...

In Slavic languages, it’s not uncommon to do doubled diminutives, so Pavel ⇢ Pavlik ⇢ Pavliček. (Or my ex-wife who didn’t like the shortness of my name “Don” but liked the Czech vocative of it, Doničku¹ which she then abbreviated to Ičku, then she hispanicized that by adding a new diminutive to it, becoming Ičquito.

⸻

1. I’m named after my father and this is how his Czech-speaking great-grandmother who lived with his family until her death called him. On one occasion not long after we were married, the three of us were driving and I made some slightly tasteless joke and my ex-wife from the backseat said in a scolding tone, Doničku which made my dead whip his head around in surprise/shock.

Now I am imagining Donald and Ivana Trump arguing

As a Richard, I imagine, it started as Richard -> Rick. And then someone wrote the R with a real big top part and the lines at the bottom got overlooked.

Got in the wrong government records like that, and soon enough it's a long explaination or you just go with it, and Bob's your uncle.

But rhyming as a sibling notes is more likely (and insinuated by Bob) cockney rhyming slang is insiduious but nickname rhymes aren't quite to the same level.

I'm not going with it, fyi.

Don't feel bad, native English speakers like me can't understand it either. FWIW I think those that explain it are mostly making up reasons.

From what I recall reading: Richard was a common name so people used nicknames often, and this became shortened versions Rick/Rich. Eventually rhyming into Dick/Hick.

Similar for Robert -> (shortened) Rob -> (rhyme) Bob.

Worth noting, the dick = penis connotations happened later on, so Dick was just a nickname!

As well as boys names, girls names have some strange shortened forms:

- Margaret -> Peggy

- Anne -> Nan

- Margaret -> Madge, Marge, Maggie, Marjorie, Margarethe, Margherita, Greta, Gretchen, Margarita, Rita, Margot, Margo, Molly, ...

- Elizabeth -> Eliza, Liza, Lisa, Liz, Lizzy, Elly, Ellie, Ell, Elle, Elsa, Liesbeth, Lizbeth, Lisbeth, Lizbet, Isabella, Isabel, Isabell, Sabella, Zabel, Bella, Beth, Betty, ...

Yes, was just listing the least intuitive ones.

And dick used to be short for detective, and used by private investigators like Dick Tracy. Then there is the implied Dick pun, like "Magnum" PI, where Magnum is a "Big Dick"

Wiktionary says this sense is shortened from “detective”, not related to the name FWIW

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dick (see English etymology #2)

Wasn't a detective written as dic without the k? Clearly, the k was going to be used because everyone's inner 12 year old

Also "dic" just doesn't look like an English word - compare kick, lick, sick, tick, etc. There are English words ending in -ic but they tend to be longer, Latinate ones.

Epic mic drop there.

OK, that's actually a good example, but "mic" is a clipping of "microphone" and isn't pronounced the same anyway.

sic joins the chat

Dick rhymes with Rick short for Richard

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