Talk:Nancy (given name)

Questionable

Questionable source, questionable origin. The more plausible one is Agnes > Annis > Ancy > Nancy, with only later association with Ann/Hannah. More plausible because it is still used for Agnes in some areas, e.g. Scotland. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.136.226.187 (talk) 20:02, 1 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed questionable. Originally, when name books spoke of the name "Nancy" in connection to "Ann" they would invariably say that the connection was uncertain, but later books started just taking that connection as a given, ignoring that such a connection was uncertain. However, the more likely source for the name is Celtic in origin, specifically Cornish "Nance" (often used as a surname, and as a male's given name, and then the diminutive form "Nancy" began being used as a female's name, at which point it starts appearing in English, particularly in the West of England, near Cornwall, as a female's name). "Nance," itself, is a Cornish word meaning "valley" with cognates in other Celtic languages (such as Welsh "nant"). Even though this origin has been noted by scholars, most name books are just based on earlier books which perpetuate the uncertainties; most authors of name books unfortunately do not use modern scholarship in their writing. — al-Shimoni (talk) 21:49, 17 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Article plagiarized since December 2019

The current text looked fishy, so I checked the cited source, https://nameberry.com/babyname/Nancy, and found identical text with minute alterations. The text on nameberry.com doesn’t appear to be licensed for use here. I traced the act of plagiarism to this edit on Dec 3 2019 by 71.53.142.9 (talk). Even before then, the article didn’t incorporate the suggestions made here in 2012 or 2014, but now it is even worse. I don’t know how to fix it. — RadRafe (talk) 02:38, 30 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]