May 8, 2019 • 13 mins
What's in a nickname? Sometimes they make sense, sometimes they don't. Let's get our shorty on and find out the deal.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck,
there's Josh, and this is short stuff. Like I said,
your nickname is Josh, which is short for Joshua, and
that makes sense. It does almost boringly. So your nickname
is Chuck, which is short for Chuck. Now it's short
(00:25):
for Charles. Yeah. That's what kind of got me onto this.
I realized I sort of never knew how Chuck came
from Charles. And there are a lot of examples of
names that, uh, we're going to go through right now
that don't quite make sense, and there are some interesting
and murky stories behind a lot of these. Well let's
start with yours. Look, Chuck, I always thought Chuck was
(00:47):
short for Chuck Chuck bo Buck, but it's not. It's
it's short for Charles. But it doesn't really make sense.
I mean, there is the ch that that you know,
you're like, well, okay, there's so see it in that way.
That's about it, though, But it turns out that the
story behind how Chuck got associated with Charles is one
of the most fascinating, convoluted stories that anyone's ever come
(01:10):
up with, And unlike most nicknames for English language names. Um.
It does not come from England or even from the
UK or Europe. Comes from America, specifically the Lower East
Side of New York, in Chinatown, where there was a
guy named Um George Washington O'Connor who came to be
(01:33):
known as the first Chuck, Chuck O'Connor, org just Chuck Connors, Yeah,
and not the Chuck Connors, the actor of the Yeah,
that's a little confusing, but this is a gangster. He
grew up in Chinatown, and this is how the story goes.
You know, we weren't there. Um hung out in Chinatown
a lot by growing up there obviously, and became known
(01:54):
as a mayor of Chinatown. And he says that he
got the name Chuck because he loved Chuck Steak, and
everyone else said that's not true. Man. Yeah, I mean
I don't know. He's the guy he should know, but
other people appointed to the eighteen fifty census in the
US where if you look at those names and you
pick out the Chucks or the variations of Chuck, they
(02:17):
were Chinese. He's in Chinatown, variations of Chuck in Chinatown.
And so basically when he dies, they misprint his name
as Charles. He never wants Charles. No, it was George.
So it was just basically a big mistake. I'm a
big mistake. Well, your nickname is, that's all. Yeah, not
(02:39):
a bad one. Not about another. How about um hank
Hank is short for Harry or Henry. Right. Weird, but
this one makes more sense. It does. It's actually pretty straightforward.
Um Hank h gyng k is actually the Dutch name
for Henry, right. And so back in the century again
(03:00):
around New York with all the Dutch settlers, they would
have called somebody whose name was Henry Hank h g
n k, which eventually became Hank. Pretty boring until you
realize that the original nickname for Henry wasn't Hank, but
among English speakers it was Harry, so much so that
Prince Harry, his real name, is actually Prince Henry, which
(03:21):
I had no idea until today yesterday, same here. Uh.
This one is super interesting because I've often pondered how
does a Richard become a dick? And this one is.
This one kind of goes back to medieval times when
basically there were kind of like four names. You were John, William,
(03:43):
Robert or Richard um and then there was always like
you know, says over in the corner, but it was
basically those four names more or less, and so it
got really confusing, and so nicknames became really popular, so
you could sort out your Richard's and your Robert's and
your John's and your Williams. Yeah, because not only did
(04:05):
they all have the same first name, people didn't have
last names by that time. Yet. It's just so confusing
back then, it really was. So people started coming up
with rhyming names where the first letter would be different, right.
You had to make sure you were killing the right
guy right, exactly right. So Richard has always had the
shortened form of rick basically, but because you might know
(04:27):
seven ricks, you might also call one of them hick
or dick. Because rhyming names and switching letters with an
H or a D was very very popular back when
people had absolutely nothing to do but farm and then die,
so they would come up with with stuff like this.
So the original nickname for Richard was hick Um at first,
(04:50):
from what I understand. Yeah, the same for Robert. Robert
wasn't Bob at first, it was Dobb or hobb, and
then Bob came along much later. For the same reason. Yeah,
and actually you can see this. There are people walking
around with the last names of Hobson or Dobson. That
would be the son of a Bob or Robert who
(05:10):
is nicknamed Hobbard dobb by the people again who had
nothing to do with their time. All right, this is
getting really confusing, So we're going to take a quick
break and come back and talk about Williams and Margaret's
and Sarah's and Ann's and John's right for this, Okay, Chuck,
(05:50):
William to Bill seems pretty straightforward. Will Bill at rhymes,
but apparently that's not the story behind it. If you
go into the Irish Gaelic dialect, which is probably a
form of Celtic, if you'll remember from the Druid episode,
if you um look at the letter W, you would
typically want to say W, but now it actually makes
(06:12):
a buzz sound. And so when William the Conqueror headed
into Ireland in the late seventeenth century UM, he was
not very well liked, and so the local people who
spoke Irish Gaelic saw that William and called him Billy
instead of Willie. They called him Billy King. Billy was
(06:33):
the first Bill and that's how Bill became the nickname
for William. But how does the Bill become a law uh?
On Capitol Hill? It just hangs around. Uh, ladies, we
haven't forgotten about you. Uh. Mark Peggy is a nickname
for Margaret. Which this is where things get really interesting
with the rhymes. Yeah, if you weren't interested before, prepared
(06:56):
to be finally in this episode, because apparently in the
fifteen hundreds, in the sixteenth century, there was another fad
for rhyming M names with P names. So the this
is how it goes timeline wise. Margaret becomes Marge, that
becomes mag or mag I guess um, that becomes meg
(07:21):
Eventually that becomes Meggie perhaps, and then that becomes Meggy yep,
Maggie Peggy. And they say that that's the lineage or
not the lineage. But you know what's the word I'm
looking for? The uh, well, the lineage. I think that works.
The etymology, the evolution, Yeah, the evolution. There you go
that thing. Here's another one from Margaret. So did you
(07:43):
know that Daisy is a nickname for Margaret? I had
never heard that. I hadn't either, which makes zero sense
until you start speaking French and you find out that
um marguerite is the word for the flower daisy. And
so some English speakers, who we're pretty full of themselves, said,
we're gonna start calling Margaret's daisies. Okay, I buy that,
(08:06):
I love it. Martha would turn into math or moth um.
Eventually that would become Maddie, and then Patty and then Patsy.
So Patsy is apparently still a nickname for Martha. Did
not know that one. I did not know that either.
So my favorite of all is and to Nancy. Yeah,
(08:27):
I like this one too. Actually, so instead of like
calling saying something was my m y, people would say mine,
and they would speak affectionately of people or I guess
possessively of people by saying like mine an right, And
then because people don't like to expend a lot of energy,
that got shortened to Nan my Nan Nan Right. Then
(08:50):
Nan got kind of changed and dalled up to Nanny
and then Nancy and then finally Nancy. So Nancy is
a nickname for Ann. And the same thing also applies
to like ned nelly um any any English name that
begins with a vowel um could be changed from mine
(09:14):
ed to ned pretty easily. There's one apparently ascribed to
baby talk or attributed to I guess I should say
Sarah um. Apparently some kids have problems pronouncing the little
the letter R, it will sound like an L. So
(09:35):
Sarah somehow makes the leap to Sally because of kids.
I guess have you Have you ever heard Sally is
a nickname for Sarah? No? I always thought Sally was
just that was just the name you were born with,
or maybe it was short for salsa. You know, my
(09:58):
daughter started making up nicknames for ghost friends, which I
guess her imaginary friends. Uh. And it's funny to see
her just come up with these names because one of
them is salsa. Oh really, that's awesome. Yeah, there's uh
o C, salsa, fossil um andy, see saw and see you.
She loves the sibilants. Huh yeah. I mean it's it's
(10:20):
all sort of you know, it's it's uh, she's working
it out. You're like, it's all in good fun. It is.
But now, like I reference salsa or fossil or o
C and she's like, yeah, they're right over there, And
then I laugh. But part of me goes is my
house haunted? Right as long as they're not telling her
to burn things. I think you're okay. My my oldest
(10:43):
sister had imaginary friends and they were named Bobby Teak
and Peak. Bobby Teak and Peak. Was it Bobby Teaka
is one name or there were three people? There were
three people, so there must be something to that alliteration,
and I think, so, all right, let's finish up with
John and Jack being a nickname for John, because I
always when I first heard that, I think it was
(11:07):
in the presidential debates when uh, who was it that
said you're no Jack Kennedy Lloyd Benson. Yeah, I remember
hearing that and being like, who the heck is Jack Kennedy?
I think he met John and uh, then I found
out it was a nickname, and I never I never
quite got that until yesterday. Yeah, which is weird because
(11:29):
nicknames are usually shortened names. This is just two four
letter names and John and Jack. But yeah, Jack is
a is a nickname for John and they There's a
couple of theories. One is an easy one that it
goes back to the Norman invasion where the French would
have brought the name Jacques over and that's that People
were like, oh, Jacques Jack, you know, makes sense. The
(11:52):
problem is is that Jacques is the French name for James,
not John, so there's a little bit of a hole
in that one. The other is again in medieval England, um,
sometimes you would add ki n Ken as a suffix.
So William was Wilkin, Peter was Perkin, which is how
you get things like again wilkins son or perkins um.
(12:15):
And apparently John became Jenkin, and Jenkin was shortened to Jink,
which became Jack. I think really this just demonstrates no
one knows where Jack came from. I think. So. So
there you go. Hopefully your name was in there. If
it wasn't, you can make up your own nickname. It's cool. Um,
go ahead and let us know what it is. Find
us somewhere on social or via email who knows. But
(12:38):
we leave it up to you to determine which route
to take. In the meantime, we're out of here with
our short stuff. Stuff you should know is production of
iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my
heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hello, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck,
there's Josh, and this is short stuff. Like I said,
your nickname is Josh, which is short for Joshua, and
that makes sense. It does almost boringly. So your nickname
is Chuck, which is short for Chuck. Now it's short
(00:25):
for Charles. Yeah. That's what kind of got me onto this.
I realized I sort of never knew how Chuck came
from Charles. And there are a lot of examples of
names that, uh, we're going to go through right now
that don't quite make sense, and there are some interesting
and murky stories behind a lot of these. Well let's
start with yours. Look, Chuck, I always thought Chuck was
(00:47):
short for Chuck Chuck bo Buck, but it's not. It's
it's short for Charles. But it doesn't really make sense.
I mean, there is the ch that that you know,
you're like, well, okay, there's so see it in that way.
That's about it, though, But it turns out that the
story behind how Chuck got associated with Charles is one
of the most fascinating, convoluted stories that anyone's ever come
(01:10):
up with, And unlike most nicknames for English language names. Um.
It does not come from England or even from the
UK or Europe. Comes from America, specifically the Lower East
Side of New York, in Chinatown, where there was a
guy named Um George Washington O'Connor who came to be
(01:33):
known as the first Chuck, Chuck O'Connor, org just Chuck Connors, Yeah,
and not the Chuck Connors, the actor of the Yeah,
that's a little confusing, but this is a gangster. He
grew up in Chinatown, and this is how the story goes.
You know, we weren't there. Um hung out in Chinatown
a lot by growing up there obviously, and became known
(01:54):
as a mayor of Chinatown. And he says that he
got the name Chuck because he loved Chuck Steak, and
everyone else said that's not true. Man. Yeah, I mean
I don't know. He's the guy he should know, but
other people appointed to the eighteen fifty census in the
US where if you look at those names and you
pick out the Chucks or the variations of Chuck, they
(02:17):
were Chinese. He's in Chinatown, variations of Chuck in Chinatown.
And so basically when he dies, they misprint his name
as Charles. He never wants Charles. No, it was George.
So it was just basically a big mistake. I'm a
big mistake. Well, your nickname is, that's all. Yeah, not
(02:39):
a bad one. Not about another. How about um hank
Hank is short for Harry or Henry. Right. Weird, but
this one makes more sense. It does. It's actually pretty straightforward.
Um Hank h gyng k is actually the Dutch name
for Henry, right. And so back in the century again
(03:00):
around New York with all the Dutch settlers, they would
have called somebody whose name was Henry Hank h g
n k, which eventually became Hank. Pretty boring until you
realize that the original nickname for Henry wasn't Hank, but
among English speakers it was Harry, so much so that
Prince Harry, his real name, is actually Prince Henry, which
(03:21):
I had no idea until today yesterday, same here. Uh.
This one is super interesting because I've often pondered how
does a Richard become a dick? And this one is.
This one kind of goes back to medieval times when
basically there were kind of like four names. You were John, William,
(03:43):
Robert or Richard um and then there was always like
you know, says over in the corner, but it was
basically those four names more or less, and so it
got really confusing, and so nicknames became really popular, so
you could sort out your Richard's and your Robert's and
your John's and your Williams. Yeah, because not only did
(04:05):
they all have the same first name, people didn't have
last names by that time. Yet. It's just so confusing
back then, it really was. So people started coming up
with rhyming names where the first letter would be different, right.
You had to make sure you were killing the right
guy right, exactly right. So Richard has always had the
shortened form of rick basically, but because you might know
(04:27):
seven ricks, you might also call one of them hick
or dick. Because rhyming names and switching letters with an
H or a D was very very popular back when
people had absolutely nothing to do but farm and then die,
so they would come up with with stuff like this.
So the original nickname for Richard was hick Um at first,
(04:50):
from what I understand. Yeah, the same for Robert. Robert
wasn't Bob at first, it was Dobb or hobb, and
then Bob came along much later. For the same reason. Yeah,
and actually you can see this. There are people walking
around with the last names of Hobson or Dobson. That
would be the son of a Bob or Robert who
(05:10):
is nicknamed Hobbard dobb by the people again who had
nothing to do with their time. All right, this is
getting really confusing, So we're going to take a quick
break and come back and talk about Williams and Margaret's
and Sarah's and Ann's and John's right for this, Okay, Chuck,
(05:50):
William to Bill seems pretty straightforward. Will Bill at rhymes,
but apparently that's not the story behind it. If you
go into the Irish Gaelic dialect, which is probably a
form of Celtic, if you'll remember from the Druid episode,
if you um look at the letter W, you would
typically want to say W, but now it actually makes
(06:12):
a buzz sound. And so when William the Conqueror headed
into Ireland in the late seventeenth century UM, he was
not very well liked, and so the local people who
spoke Irish Gaelic saw that William and called him Billy
instead of Willie. They called him Billy King. Billy was
(06:33):
the first Bill and that's how Bill became the nickname
for William. But how does the Bill become a law uh?
On Capitol Hill? It just hangs around. Uh, ladies, we
haven't forgotten about you. Uh. Mark Peggy is a nickname
for Margaret. Which this is where things get really interesting
with the rhymes. Yeah, if you weren't interested before, prepared
(06:56):
to be finally in this episode, because apparently in the
fifteen hundreds, in the sixteenth century, there was another fad
for rhyming M names with P names. So the this
is how it goes timeline wise. Margaret becomes Marge, that
becomes mag or mag I guess um, that becomes meg
(07:21):
Eventually that becomes Meggie perhaps, and then that becomes Meggy yep,
Maggie Peggy. And they say that that's the lineage or
not the lineage. But you know what's the word I'm
looking for? The uh, well, the lineage. I think that works.
The etymology, the evolution, Yeah, the evolution. There you go
that thing. Here's another one from Margaret. So did you
(07:43):
know that Daisy is a nickname for Margaret? I had
never heard that. I hadn't either, which makes zero sense
until you start speaking French and you find out that
um marguerite is the word for the flower daisy. And
so some English speakers, who we're pretty full of themselves, said,
we're gonna start calling Margaret's daisies. Okay, I buy that,
(08:06):
I love it. Martha would turn into math or moth um.
Eventually that would become Maddie, and then Patty and then Patsy.
So Patsy is apparently still a nickname for Martha. Did
not know that one. I did not know that either.
So my favorite of all is and to Nancy. Yeah,
(08:27):
I like this one too. Actually, so instead of like
calling saying something was my m y, people would say mine,
and they would speak affectionately of people or I guess
possessively of people by saying like mine an right, And
then because people don't like to expend a lot of energy,
that got shortened to Nan my Nan Nan Right. Then
(08:50):
Nan got kind of changed and dalled up to Nanny
and then Nancy and then finally Nancy. So Nancy is
a nickname for Ann. And the same thing also applies
to like ned nelly um any any English name that
begins with a vowel um could be changed from mine
(09:14):
ed to ned pretty easily. There's one apparently ascribed to
baby talk or attributed to I guess I should say
Sarah um. Apparently some kids have problems pronouncing the little
the letter R, it will sound like an L. So
(09:35):
Sarah somehow makes the leap to Sally because of kids.
I guess have you Have you ever heard Sally is
a nickname for Sarah? No? I always thought Sally was
just that was just the name you were born with,
or maybe it was short for salsa. You know, my
(09:58):
daughter started making up nicknames for ghost friends, which I
guess her imaginary friends. Uh. And it's funny to see
her just come up with these names because one of
them is salsa. Oh really, that's awesome. Yeah, there's uh
o C, salsa, fossil um andy, see saw and see you.
She loves the sibilants. Huh yeah. I mean it's it's
(10:20):
all sort of you know, it's it's uh, she's working
it out. You're like, it's all in good fun. It is.
But now, like I reference salsa or fossil or o
C and she's like, yeah, they're right over there, And
then I laugh. But part of me goes is my
house haunted? Right as long as they're not telling her
to burn things. I think you're okay. My my oldest
(10:43):
sister had imaginary friends and they were named Bobby Teak
and Peak. Bobby Teak and Peak. Was it Bobby Teaka
is one name or there were three people? There were
three people, so there must be something to that alliteration,
and I think, so, all right, let's finish up with
John and Jack being a nickname for John, because I
always when I first heard that, I think it was
(11:07):
in the presidential debates when uh, who was it that
said you're no Jack Kennedy Lloyd Benson. Yeah, I remember
hearing that and being like, who the heck is Jack Kennedy?
I think he met John and uh, then I found
out it was a nickname, and I never I never
quite got that until yesterday. Yeah, which is weird because
(11:29):
nicknames are usually shortened names. This is just two four
letter names and John and Jack. But yeah, Jack is
a is a nickname for John and they There's a
couple of theories. One is an easy one that it
goes back to the Norman invasion where the French would
have brought the name Jacques over and that's that People
were like, oh, Jacques Jack, you know, makes sense. The
(11:52):
problem is is that Jacques is the French name for James,
not John, so there's a little bit of a hole
in that one. The other is again in medieval England, um,
sometimes you would add ki n Ken as a suffix.
So William was Wilkin, Peter was Perkin, which is how
you get things like again wilkins son or perkins um.
(12:15):
And apparently John became Jenkin, and Jenkin was shortened to Jink,
which became Jack. I think really this just demonstrates no
one knows where Jack came from. I think. So. So
there you go. Hopefully your name was in there. If
it wasn't, you can make up your own nickname. It's cool. Um,
go ahead and let us know what it is. Find
us somewhere on social or via email who knows. But
(12:38):
we leave it up to you to determine which route
to take. In the meantime, we're out of here with
our short stuff. Stuff you should know is production of
iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my
heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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