first name / diminutive form

   When speakers have agreed to use one another’s first names, there can still remain the question of which form of the name is to be used. ‘I wish to God you wouldn’t call me Wilson,’ says Edward Wilson to Louise Scobie in The Heart of the Matter, by Graham Green. ‘Edward.

    Eddie. Ted. Teddy,’ she says, experimentally. She settles on Teddy, but is told: ‘I think I’d rather be Edward, Louise.’ In English no formal distinction is made between what a person is named and what he is called, though Miss Peecher, in Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend, would have argued otherwise:

   ‘She is named Lizzie, ma’am.’ ‘She can hardly be named Lizzie, I think, Mary Anne,’ returned Miss Peecher, in a tunefully instructive voice. ‘Is Lizzie a Christian name, Mary Anne?’

   ‘No, it is a corruption, Miss Peecher.’

   ‘Speaking correctly, we say, then, that Hexham’s sister is called Lizzie; not that she is named so.’

   The passage recalls the comments of Mr Gradgrind, in Hard Times.

   ‘Sissy is not a name,’ said Mr Gradgrind. ‘Don’t call yourself Sissy. Call yourself Cecilia.’

   ‘It’s father as calls me Sissy, sir,’ returned the young girl.

   ‘Then he has no business to do it,’ said Mr Gradgrind. ‘Tell him he mustn’t.’

   Mr Gradgrind is of course insensitive to the motivation for using diminutive forms of names.

   In The Business of Loving, by Godfrey Smith, two English army officers meet. ‘What do people call you?’ says the senior of the two. ‘Benny, sir.’ ‘Benny. That’s fine. My name is Rupert. For God’s sake call me that and drop this sir crap.’

   If people are asked for their first name, they are of course likely to respond by giving the form of it which they would like to have used. If a man whose name is Robert introduces himself by saying ‘I’m Bob’, then he does not expect to be addressed as Robert. With some first names the distinction between the forms would be quite significant. A working-class James who is normally known as Jim might feel that a speaker who used James to him was making fun of him. A middle-class James might well object to being addressed as Jim. The two forms of the name evoke different images in the mind of the average speaker, in Britain at least, and what is appropriate for one bearer of the name will not be so for another.

   In his essay On Nicknames, William Hazlitt says: ‘Diminutives are titles of endearment.’ Mary Webb, in Precious Bane, remarks: You can make most names into little love names. like you can cut down a cloak or gown for children’s wearing.’ Some might say that these comments apply to the formation of a diminutive by first shortening the actual name, then adding a diminutive ending. One can otherwise not be sure that the use of a shortened form does not merely reflect that economy of speech which uneducated speakers appear to favour more than the educated. There is evidence, however, that abbreviation in itself is thought of as a kind of verbal friendly gesture. We all know what Tom Sawyer means when Becky Thatcher says she knows his name - Thomas Sawyer. That’s the name they lick me by,’ he tells her. ‘I’m Tom when I’m good’ In a similar way short forms of vocatives such as ‘Sarge’ and ‘Ref’ indicate relaxed attitudes on the part of speakers. The switch back to ‘Sergeant’ instead of ‘Sarge’, ‘Referee’ instead of ‘Ref’ comes when the situation is more formal or when the listener - in the case of the referee, is being reminded of his inadequacies.

   But while the motivation for abbreviation may be friendliness, such usage may well be interpreted by more educated speakers as laziness, or a sloppy use of language. Such critics are especially surprised by the shortening of names which are already short. The latter may well be former petforms of names which are now given as names in their own right, such as ‘Betty’, from ‘Elizabeth’. Historically there was good reason for such pet-forms to take on a life of their own. Before the eighteenth century a small number of first names were used with great intensity, so that in even a small community there were many Elizabeths, Margarets and the like. Different petforms of those names were no doubt as necessary for purposes of identification as the many nicknames used in Welsh communities where everyone was called Jones. But with ‘Betty’ having become a name in its own right, it now often becomes ‘Bet’, as in War Brides, by Lois Battle. Will ‘Bet’ eventually become the name, and if so, what will be its diminutive form? ‘Bet’ is one of those reductions which looks a little odd when written, as if it is an instruction to risk one’s money on some sporting event. The ‘Barb’ which is used for ‘Barbara’ in Blue Dreams, by William Hanley, also looks unfortunate, almost as much as the ‘Die’ which occurs in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. Modern writers, of course, would use ‘Di’ as the short form of ‘Diana’, an ‘-i’ ending in names having become acceptable. Novelists remark on the use of first name diminutives in various ways, and perhaps should be allowed to speak for themselves. They are often informative, telling us of vocative usage in particular sections of society. They can also be witty, as Arnold Bennett demonstrates in The Old Wives’ Tale, where he is talking about a woman called Amy: ‘“Shut up, Ame,” he replied, smiling. Life being short, he normally called her Ame when they were alone together.’ The following comment is from Persephone, by L.M.Boston:’ “How did you enjoy your day by the sea, Zephy?” asked little Sister Agnes in the Common Room. Abbreviations were little used at St Hilarion, because saints’ names must be treated with respect, but with a pagan name liberties may be taken.’ Resolve This Day, by Geoffrey Bainbridge, has: More than twenty years of marriage, and there still seemed to be something wrong in her calling him ‘Andy’. She was almost the only one who had ever done so. It had always been a stern ‘Andrew Cunningham’ in his strict Scottish boyhood home. And then, when she’d started calling him Andy during their very brief courtship before the war - it had seemed intimate, special.

   With this we may compare, from John Galsworthy’s The Forsyte Saga: ‘“I’ve been frightened, Freddie.” The old pet name, disused for years and years, sent a shiver through Winifred.’ A World of Difference, by Stanley Price, has the curious comment, made by a woman to a man: ‘You don’t mind me calling you Nicholas, do you? It’s so much less devilish than Nicky.’ This would have had more point to it if she had compared Nicholas with Nick, a much more immediate link with Old Nick. A deliberate reinterpretation of a pet form occurs in Sam, by Lonnie Coleman: ‘“Hello, Addie.” Richard said. “Hello, Richard,” Addie said, not smiling. “Tell me,” Richard said, “what does Addie stand for - adversary?” “That’s right,” she said. “I suppose Richard is short for prick.”’ Addie here is actually a woman whose name is Adeline. The last remark is rather convoluted reference to ‘dick’, in its slang sense of ‘penis’. Of Human Bondage, by Somerset Maugham, has a proud father introducing his family:

   ‘Now the girls in order: Maria del Sol…’’ ‘Pudding-face,’ said one of the small boys. Your sense of humour is rudimentary, my son. Maria de los Mercedes, Maria del Pilar, Maria de la Concepcion, Maria del Rosario.’ ‘I call them Sally, Molly, Connie, Rosie and Jane,’ said Mrs Athelny.

   A correspondent to a women’s magazine a few years ago made a similar point. After much deliberation she and her husband had named their daughters Abigail, Rebecca, and Shoshanna. At school they were known by the affectionate diminutives Biggy, Ecky, and Slosh.

   The ways in which diminutive names are formed would make a lengthy linguistic study in itself. The ‘-y’ or ‘-ie’ suffix is the most widely used, added to the stem of a first name. Thursday Afternoons, by Monica Dickens, has ‘Marry’ and ‘Amby’, for instance, used to a Marion and Ambrose. Some names have more individual pet-forms, such as ‘Jimbo’ from ‘James’. This may be a reduced form of ‘Jimboy’, since the addition of ‘-boy’ is another way of creating a diminutive. The well-known example ‘Del-boy’, used in Britain to a man called Derek, shows a consonant change which has been normal for centuries, ‘Harry’ having given rise to ‘Hal’, ‘Sarah’ to ‘Sal’, ‘Mary’ to ‘Mal’, later ‘Moll’. In Britain in the late 1980s the tendency is to convert ‘Barry’ to ‘Baz’, ‘Sharon’ to ‘Shaz’. Cate Poynton, of the University of Sydney, reports on the use in Australia of ‘Bazza’ for ‘Barry’, ‘Pezza’ for ‘Perrin’, ‘Ekka’ for ‘Eric’, ‘Mokka’ for ‘Maurice’. These are by no means as exclusively Australian as the writer suggests.

   By a kind of linguistic playfulness, the initial letter of a pet-form may be changed. ‘Mag’, from ‘Margaret’, became ‘Meg’, then ‘Peg’. ‘Mary’ went through the ‘Mal’, ‘Moll’ stages before changing to ‘Polly’. With forms like ‘Ted’ for ‘Edward’ one suspects that the diminutives of two names may have become confused, since ‘Ted’ would more logically abbreviate ‘Theodore’. With several thousand first names in regular use in the English-speaking world, a full-scale study would be required to arrive at all diminutive elements, and even then it would be difficult to obtain information about private forms of names used between couples, say, when they are alone but never in public. ‘Leslie’, for example, can be converted into ‘Lezzums’ or ‘Les-love’, but these are intimacies, unlike the friendly - and more public ‘Les’. All this is really to say that the English language is woefully lacking in a word which would adequately translate German Rufname, the name by which a person is actually known, or wishes to be known. There may well be a difference, of course, between those two categories, so two words may be needed for ‘actual call-name(s)’ and ‘preferred call-name’.