Talk:Hypocorism

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 25 August 2020 and 12 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): BreaErwin.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 00:10, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

History of spellings

Re the point, "a reduction (in English) of a longer word...." If anyone can give me a brief idea on the origins/difference between the y spelling and the ie spelling I would greatly appreciate it. My name is Lachlan; my mum spells it Lachie, I spell it Lachy. My feeling is y is the more Celtic in origin whereas ie is a French adaptation. (58.110.122.143 (talk) 01:47, 18 June 2013 (UTC))

It seems whollie arbitrarie to me. —Tamfang (talk) 07:49, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

History and psychology

Some discussion on the history and psychology behind hypocoristics would be good, and probably protect it from WP:WINAD. I don't think Diminutive covers (or can cover) hypocoristics, or their history, well enough.

Anybody know much about them before I cobble together something? Until then, should this be marked as a stub? --Mark 16:34, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Diaphragm?

Given the many, and special, meanings of "diaphragm" in English I'm not keen on correcting this, but isn't the pitch of speech sounds dependent on the larynx? The way it it is said now, I think of big and small croaking frogs ... klaus --91.32.9.240 17:05, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Japanese -chan and -tan

Strictly speaking, -tan is a diminutive of -chan which is a diminutive of -san which is a diminutive of -sama, which is an honorific. It is thus not part of the name itself.

I'm not sure about -pi.

While I'm commenting, the article should probably mention the almost universal dropping of "-ko" and "-mi" from girl's names. For example, a girl named Haruko might be called Hatchan by her closest friend(s), and Haru-chan by the rest of the class. Only strangers, distant relatives, and adults who were telling her off would bother with the full "Haruko-chan" form. --61.214.155.14 (talk) 04:34, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Ernesto not Che

I deleted Che for Ernesto. Ernesto Guevara was called "Che" for his use of the interjection "che"; it doesn't mean that other Ernestos would have that nickname. 190.136.59.66 (talk) 21:22, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

v. pet name

According to the OED, Hypocoristic is an adjective not a noun, and given that the OED actually defines Hypocoristic in terms of pet name: "of the nature of a pet name [Greek hupokoristikos from hupokorizomai ‘call by pet names’]" (Concise Oxford, 9th edn.) I have to question why pet name redirects here rather than vice versa. This is an unbelievably obscure word, why use Greek when there is a perfectly good English word that everyone knows? Checking the Shorter Oxford, the noun form is hypocorism (=pet name) (and it was already marked as "rare" several decades ago) so I have to say I think using Hypocoristic as the head word is factually incorrect. Samatarou (talk) 23:05, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't know why the OED would say that, but linguists (like me) certainly use it in the plural "hypocoristics", and you will get thousands of hits for this on google (put a '+' in front of it to prevent Google from stripping the 's'). So it is a noun in English (and maybe an adjective too).

That doesn't address the issue of rarity, of course. But as a linguist, I would never have thought to look for this article under 'pet name'.Mcswell (talk) 00:31, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Mcswell, your response is unbelievable. Your claim to be a 'linguist' is questionable. If you truly are a trained linguist, you need to ask for your money back from the University where you received your training. Here in the United States, you first have to successfully complete four (4) years of high school English before you are eligible to be considered for acceptance at an accredited College or University. Your answer carries a hint that you are not even aware of who or what OED is. ("...I don't know why the OED would say that..."). Apparently, for you, Google search results outweigh any entry in the OED. In an apparent attempt to 'prove' that your erroneous misuse is 'okay', you invite us to Google-search for a different word (hypocoristics, rather than hypocoristic). Your apparent claim that 'thousands of hits' for that different word (hypocoristics) somehow justifies your misuse of an adjective (hypocoristic) as a noun is mind-boggling. The correct noun-form of hypocoristic is 'hypocorism'. The number of hits from a Google search is meaningless and irrelevant.

As proof of the meaninglessness of 'number of Google hits' as proof of anything, let's punch the misspelled word, Anabapist, into Google (missing the first 't'). Good Glory to God, I get over 500 hits! Using your methodology, the misspelling must be correct! We got tons of Google hits! NOT

Let's try another... let's punch in the misspelled 'Numerolgy' (missing the second 'o'). Good Glory God Almighty! I get over TEN THOUSAND hits! Using your methodology, the misspelling must be correct! We got thousands of Google hits! NOT

We could go on and on. Punch into Google Search ANY misspelling or incorrect usage and you'll get numerous 'hits' -- all meaningless when accuracy and correctness are desired.

This is not a personal attack against Mcswell. She has claimed that an incorrect usage is A-Okay. Somehow now the incorrect is correct because SHE says it is correct-- notwithstanding the contrary evidence found in a published reliable source, the OED. In a further attempt to bolster her wrongness and 'win' the argument, she makes a claim that she is a 'linguist'. This post of mine here is only a direct response to her clearly understood claim that 'wrong is right because Mcswell says so'. In fine, wrong is not right by any authority of Mcswell; the word 'hypocoristic' is an adjective; the noun-form of hypocoristic is 'hypocorism'; and, the name of this page should be Hypocorism (the noun), not hypocoristic (the adjective). Joe Hepperle (talk) 22:50, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

See #Bad Usage, below. -- Hoary (talk) 03:21, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

What?

Sarah → Sally where in the word is Sally a short form of Sarah? It's not even shorter, for one thing —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.9.162.175 (talk) 04:46, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

So it says at Sarah (given name) and Sally, though I'm not sure where citations for such a claim could be gotten. Mary → Molly → Polly is similar. Since Hypocorism apparently means "baby-talk", and since the "Derivation" section mentions reduplication, possibly "shorter form" should be removed from the definition. "Easier form"? "Relaxed form"? 213.122.60.95 (talk) 17:29, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

British

Is it worth pointing out that the brits seem to use more of this sort of thing in their slang? Compared to other english speakers they seem to have a lot of baby talk. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.11.36.165 (talk) 18:51, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

173.11.36.165 No original research. --Mr. Guye (talk) 20:26, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Bad Usage

Hypocorism is the encyclopedic subject. The term 'hypocoristic' is an adjective. The fact that, as in all languages, some few people misunderstand, are ignorant, or were taught incorrectly by ignorant predecessors does not 'validate' the error of usage. This article has only one reference listed, from OED, and that reference is from OED's entry on HYPOCORISM, not 'hypocoristic'. Several posters on the talk page have already made this point, apparently to deaf ears (so-to-speak) of other editors. I am initiating a page rename request: From 'hypocoristic' to 'hypocorism'. Those who wish to persist in their error have no need to worry. Entering 'hypocoristic' in the search box will still get you here because a redirect will exist. Joe Hepperle (talk) 20:53, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

My apologies for the late response, but: Right is not wrong by any authority of Joe Hepperle; the word hypocoristic is either an adjective or a noun. See the OED, s.v. hypocoristic ("b. n. A pet name."). Or R. L. Trask, A Dictionary of Phonetics and Phonology (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 1996), s.v. hypocorism ("hypocorism n. (also hypocoristic or, more rarely, hypocorisma) A diminutive, especially one used as an endearment or pet name...."). Or Laurie Bauer, A Glossary of Morphology (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2004), s.v. hypocoristic ("A hypocoristic is a pet-name...."). In short, Mcswell was correct. -- Hoary (talk) 02:19, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

Historical examples?

Is there a place for historical examples, perhaps in a different article? For example, the daughter of Abigail Adams, was also named Abigail, but in the family she was called "Nabby" to distinguish her from her mother. --DThomsen8 (talk) 14:02, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Not only names, but words as well? Also, "Gogo" in S. Africa

This article, from my quick scanning of it, seems to focus on hypocorisms of given names, when the summary mentions words as well. Examples of the latter would be helpful. (Sorry that I'm posting this without carefully reading the article, but I'm at my limit tonight.)

I ran across the hypocorism article while adding in a referenced definition for Gogo (South African for Granny) at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oprah_Winfrey_Leadership_Academy_for_Girls#Visiting_the_elderly

So, there's one hypocorism, complete with reference, that does not substitute for a given name. I think. I'm very tired (lopsided grin). I'm documenting this request and info tidbit here for whoever can take up the research and revision, and to those people, I give my sleepy thanks. Thank-yawwwwn-ks! --Geekdiva (talk) 09:40, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

IPA pronounciation guide - correct?

Is the given pronounciation, /haɪˈpɒkərɪzəm/ correct? I would have expected /haɪpəˈkɒrɪzəm/.

You sure these are all hypocorisms?

Most of these examples just look like nicknames to me. --Mr. Guye (talk) 20:24, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

French examples lacking

There are some very typical French pet names which characterise a common way they do it that are not listed here.

Micheline → Mimi

Philipe → Fifi

My mother is French and I have spent time with my relatives in Normandy, so this is first hand information. There are many others like this.

Geoffpointer (talk) 00:14, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Inconsistency, cleanup help needed.

The listing in the English section is very inconsistent. This article is referenced in MOS:NICKNAME, as a basis to decide for example whether to put a nickname in quote marks in the lead sentence of an article. It should be reasonably accurate. For example, "John → Jack" was listed as a "shortening" - in which case it should not be used in the lead sentence - and also under "A short form that differs significantly from the name", in which case it should. See Talk:John F. Kennedy#Semi-protected edit request for the uncertainty that produced. I've cleaned up the John/Jack entries, but a lot more work needs to be done. There are a number of other names that inconsistently appear both in "shortening" or "diminutive" as well as in "short form that differs significantly", e.g. Dorothy → Dot → Dottie; James → Jamie, Jim →Jimmy; etc., or are in an inappropriate category such as Adelaide → Heidi being in "shortening" when it ought to be in "short form that differs significantly". There are also some rather dubious entries like "Anne → Annie; Nan → Nancy". Furthermore, although it doesn't affect MOS:NICKNAME decisions as much, most "diminutive" names are duplicated in the "shortening" section, though some like Rosemary → Rose → Rosie are only listed in "diminutive" and not "shortening". It would be great if people could help clean it up! --IamNotU (talk) 17:54, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

just... no

Hi. Here's a suggestion: let's eliminate every given example that doesn't cite a credible source. At very least, cite a single online-accessible source for multiple instances.

I'll leave it alone for a couple of weeks, on the off chance that someone will fix this properly, or at least offer some defense of it.
Weeb Dingle (talk) 01:05, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

@Weeb Dingle: While I would support the removal of unsourced content, there is no requirement that citations be online-accessible. Nzd (talk) 12:53, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

Normally, I might agree with you. However, in this instance, it would not be at all feasible to verify someone's claim to the effect "oh, it's okay, all of these 273 examples are covered in one hard-to-find out-of-print book (of which I happen to have the only known copy), here's the citation."

You might find it helpful to revisit Wikipedia:Verifiability.

We can compromise: Since you are clearly ready to take on this project, all you need to do is find a credible in-print publication that verifies all of the entries in each language section. I'll be along eventually to remove any that are unsupported, per the seven-year-old EXAMPLE FARM template up at the top.

For the moment, I am blanking the big chunk of text in the middle that has no citations whatever, and is therefore clearly an original research vio and likely an NPOV problem as well. Per WP:PROVEIT, anything brought back had better cite a verifiable source.
Weeb Dingle (talk) 17:19, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

I was agreeing with you...

However, having just 'revisited' WP:V, I note that it says Some reliable sources may not be easily accessible. For example, an online source may require payment, and a print-only source may be available only in university libraries. Rare historical sources may even be available only in special museum collections and archives. Do not reject reliable sources just because they are difficult or costly to access. If you have trouble accessing a source, others may be able to do so on your behalf (see WikiProject Resource Exchange).

At no point did I say that I was ready to take on any kind of project (I have neither the time or the inclination). I was stating that I supported (agreed with) the removal of unsourced content, but with the proviso that "unsourced" doesn't include things that you (or I) happen to not have access to. Cheers, Nzd (talk) 17:47, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

Split article

Suggestion (not yet a proposal): create "List of Hypocorisms" and move all the pointless examples there. IAmNitpicking (talk) 21:56, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Unsourced / original research moved

I have parked the sections that were discussed above by Nzd, IAmNitpicking and Weeb Dingle at Talk:Hypocorism/Unsourced for the time being. For one, those sections are entirely unsourced and borderline original research. While many of the examples for languages I am familiar with are intuitively correct, this is not sufficient as threshold for inclusion. At the same time, the examples also mislead towards equating a hypocorism with a dimunitive of a name. From what I can see in dictionary references, any "pet name" is a hypocorism, e.g. if Paul is called "Buster" or my partner calls me "darling", that's all covered under this term. Essentially the list could be endless. I suggest that examples and explanations are moved back step by step as proper references are found in the context of "hypocorism". _pseudonym Jake Brockman ^talk 00:50, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 19 February 2022

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Not Moved. Interested editors should engage in merge discussion on talk page if relevant. Mike Cline (talk) 13:18, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

---

Hypocorism → Pet name – Per WP:COMMONNAME. "Pet name" is vastly more common than hypocorism across all domains. The Google Ngram Viewer shows it as 100 times as common in books. Google Scholar shows it in 14,100 scholarly articles compared to 702 for hypocorism. Google Search shows it in 4 million web pages, compared with 47 thousand for hypocorism. Dan Bloch (talk) 01:58, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

• Support. Obvious common name. Rreagan007 (talk) 02:46, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support Or I was just one of stupid ones who never heard of this until WP.—Bagumba (talk) 02:53, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

I'll be honest, I had never heard of this term either before today. Rreagan007 (talk) 03:26, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

• Merge to Term of endearment. It's the same topic. I would probably support a follow-up nom to move Term of endearment to Pet name, but I think the primary issue is that Hypocorism has a duplicate scope of an article that has a more appropriate name. (Hypocorism is basically the worst possible name for this because of WP:COMMON, so it easily loses out to Term of endearment). --Xurizuri (talk) 04:01, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose as ambiguous, as a hypocorism is not the name of a pet. Also, my impression is that it is more of a nickname than a "term of endearment". Oxford says it can be either familiar or diminutive, neither of which are necessarily indicating affection. When I refer to someone named Edward as Ed, it may just be a matter of noticing that this is what other people call him rather than expressing fondness. Instead we should redirect this to Nickname, since this article is just a WP:DICTDEF. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 05:59, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

You're misrepresenting the Oxford dictionary. First, you're leaving out the relevant part; the definition in its entirety says, "A familiar or diminutive form of a name; a pet name." Second, to be clear, this is Lexico. The OED, which is a different dictionary, just says, "A pet-name." Also note that "pet name" doesn't mean the name of a pet. Having said all that, I don't object to redirecting hypocorism/pet name to nickname if there's general agreement that they mean the same thing, but that can be addressed separately. Dan Bloch (talk) 07:24, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

• I'd like to point out that a raw count from ngrams is not telling the full story here, since we tend to prefer to give more weight to the language used in dedicated scholarly treatments of a topic, rather than passing mentions in casual contexts. Hence why we have an article at Fellatio rather than Blow job. (Or, to take a different example from linguistics, we have an article called High rising terminal, rather than Uptalk). I'm not very familiar with this subject area, but, for example, this post on Language Log seems to suggest that hypocoristics are a precisely defined linguistic phenomenon that can't exactly be conflated with "pet name" or "nickname". Colin M (talk) 16:34, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

  ...prefer to give more weight to the language used in dedicated scholarly treatments of a topic...: Is there a similar guideline to medicine's WP:NCMED, to use "scientific or recognised medical name"? Otherwise, as for blow job, that would be discounted as a slang. Uptalk seems more technical, and not an everyday term, so would defer to common domain usage.—Bagumba (talk) 01:06, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose - as I have not before seen the term used to refer to the meaning that hypocoristics may often convey, rather than the morphological process. From W.B McGregor (2015: 86, Linguistics - An Introduction): A variant on clipping that is common in Australian English is hypocorism. This involves first clipping a word down to a closed monosyllable. Next the suffix -y ~ -ie (/i/) is attached to the clipped form. Some examples are Aussie ‘Australian’, brekky ‘breakfast’, bickie ‘biscuit’, barbie ‘barbeque’ and telly ‘television’. The same suffix can be added to clipped personal names (e.g. Mickey, Robby, Lizzie); but there is no suffixless brek or bick corresponding to brekky and bickie. I interpret this to say that the term is used for the proces (closed-monosyllabification+/i/-sufffixation) and does not necessarily mean that the resulting word is a name or endearing. I guess it can also be taken to mean that the article should be merged with Clipping (morphology) instead though... Replayful (talk) 18:34, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

There's a relevant footnote I came across in a 2001 paper, "Hypocoristics of place-names in Australian English" where the author talks about her reason for using the term "hypocoristic" over other alternatives: Alternative words and names are often discussed under names such as ‘shortenings’, ‘clippies’, ‘abbreviations’, ‘truncations’, which focus on one means for creating them, or under the name ‘hypocoristics’ which labels the meanings, or under the name ‘diminutives’ which labels one kind of meaning and, implicitly, one aspect of the form. Since there are several means for creating these alternative forms, we cannot use names like ‘clippies’. We adopt with some reluctance the label ‘hypocoristic’ which is more general, if less transparent. Though I don't know to what degree this taxonomy reflects scholarly consensus. Colin M (talk) 20:15, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

• Merge a hypocorism is different from a pet name. However, this article is so short that it doesn't explain the difference. It should be merged to some other list, maybe List of words about words that XKCD has made jokes about in the context of Wikipedia. User:力 (powera, π, ν) 02:01, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
• Comment I would argue that all of the above are actually arguments for this renaming. "Hypocorism" is currently linked as a synonym for "pet name" in hundreds of places. If it means something else, the only way to write about that is to first rename the existing article to "pet name", freeing up hypocorism for other content. (I would change the hypocorism links to point to pet name.) Dan Bloch (talk) 07:06, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

Would that be any different from removing the redirect "pet name">"hypocorism" and creating a separate Pet name article? Because I would support that if the two are kept separate (at least in some way) - I may simply not be too familiar with how (re)moving, redirects and renamings work on Wikipedia. Replayful (talk) 17:28, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

​Sorry, missed this. This doesn't seem advisable, since it would result in two identical articles, at least to start with and possibly forever. Splitting first is also more error-prone, since all the current links to Hypocorism assume that it means the same thing as pet name. Dan Bloch (talk) 22:23, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose. Pet names a.k.a. terms of endearment are a subset of hypocorisms, and not the major subset (which is shortenings, like Liz and Beth for Elizabeth). There's nothing wrong with the name of the article; the problem is that this miserable stub is too badly written. And, no, neither type of hypocorism is synonymous with "nickname"; that refers to non-hypocoristic alternative names (e.g. my friend James who went by "Spanky").  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:35, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

I'd love to see a taxonomy that showed that, but the reliable sources I've seen all say that hypocorism and pet name are synonyms. Dan Bloch (talk) 06:15, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

That first sentence is unreadable

I'm going to change it; feel free to change what I wrote to make it better, but please don't leave it how it was Jeeibleh (talk) 03:54, 17 June 2024 (UTC)