There are so many of these traditional English names that have, seemingly, unrelated nicknames. Who started this and are we still doing it with names today?
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My name is Richard. I’m 85 years old. I’m named after an uncle, who was always called “Dick.” When I was little I was called “Dickie.” As I got bigger this transitioned to “Dick,” which persisted into my late 50s, early 60s. Then I noticed that people more than 20 years younger than I were uncomfortable with my nickname. They called me “Richard.“ It’s what everybody calls me now.
Seventy years ago “Dick“ had already begun to be slang for “penis.” The latter was rarely used. There were slang equivalents at least as common as my nickname, if not moreso. If people tried to make a joke of my nickname, I told them they could say it with a straight face. At sixteen I was six feet, four inches, and weighed 195 lbs, big for 1953.
Nowadays my nickname not only denotes the male organ, for years it has been an insult.
My fanciful story of the shift in meaning is that it originated in the Tudor English monarchs’ efforts to blacken the reputation of their predecessor, hunchback Richard III. There is an old ballad, “Crooked Dick, the bastard King of England.”
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