Dan Radcliffe in "My Boy Jack"

[justcarol67]

[Steve B]:
> Jack is a common nickname for John. Though it seems somewhat  pointless, I can see Jim for James, or Bob for Robert, but 'Jack' and 'John' are the same length and one is no easier to say they [than] the other.
> 
> [Lee]:
> Perhaps Jack came up because the French Jacques is our John.  Just a possibility.


Carol responds to both:

I think Lee is right. However, the main reason that the English developed so many nicknames for names like John and Robert (and Elizabeth and many others) is that these names were so common. Some parents even gave the same first name to two living, legitimate children (not to mention giving the name of a dead child to a living one, the name of a father to a son or mother to a daughter, or the same name to a legitimate child and a "natural" one). The earls of Northumberland, for example, always named their first son Henry, so the name Henry Percy in that family traces back hundreds of years. So it's not that "John" was too long--obviously not--but that one John needed to be distinguished from another, so you get Johnny, Jack, and Jacky/Jackie. (For Elizabeth, you get Bet (now Beth), Betty, Bess, Bessie, Eliza, Liza, Lizzie, and so on.)

Just look at the royal families in England from the time of Edward the Confessor (one of the last Saxon kings) onward. Certain names keep recurring: William, Edward, Richard (until the Tudors destroyed Richard III's reputation), John (still the name of princes descended from the notorious King John into the fifteenth century), Henry, and after the Stuart line took over in England, James and Charles, with George joining the group with the Hanovers. (Edward IV and Richard III had a brother named George, Duke of Clarence, but it was an uncommon name then.) For women, the names Elizabeth, Isabel(la), Eleanor, Anne, Catherine, and Mary kept recurring. Once in a while, you get a Cecily, a Eustace (son of King Stephen disinherited by Henry II), or an Alfonso, but for the most part, it seems as if the English exercised their imagination in creating nicknames rather than in coming up with original names. Maybe the custom of naming a child after a godparent or a saint (or a parent) is responsible.

Carol, open to correction from anyone who happens to be English

P.S. to Lee re the five golden rings: Bet you didn't receive a partridge in a pear tree, either! <grin>