Why is William, Billy?

[Bee]

After his death I learned that my Uncle Dick was actually called Arthur 

[LizzieW]

I was at school with a girl called Marlene,(pronounced Mar-leen) her real names were Martha Helene.  With such lovely names, why would her parents take part of each name and call her Marlene.  I guess they liked Marlene Dietrich, but all we girls could think of was Beryl Reid playing Marlene with a Brummy accent in Educating Archie.

Lizzie

ps.  That rather gives my age away 

[Treetotal]

My Father was John William but was known as Bill...My Brother is Herbert William and is also known as Bill.

Other Family nicknames:

Aunt Helen = Nellie

Uncle Eric = Ned

Aunt Georgina = Jinnie

Grandma Marguerite = Peg

Granddad Edward = Ted...(Theodore Roosevelt is to blame for this) 

Mother Rose Kathleen = Kay

Most of these I can understand where the nicknames come from  but how on earth could Eric become Ned?

Carol

[Marmalady]

I don't think Bunty is short for anything?
It appears to be a dialect word that means plump?!

http://www.britishbabynames.com/blog/2012/09/bunty.html

maybe Bunty = Margaret is a regional thing then
When I asked my mother why her sister Margaret was known as Bunty, she said it was quite a common abbreviation for Margaret in Yorkshire

[pinefamily]

After his death I learned that my Uncle Dick was actually called Arthur 

When I started tracing my family history many moons ago, I sat down with my auntie, and got a list of all of my uncles' details. Imagine my surprise when I found out Uncle Dick had the Christian names of Walter Vincent.

[jan57]

 I've a  2x great aunt    who  was known  as Dinah,   but  her  real  name was Alice Maud ,   still haven't worked  out   the reason ! ........ Any   ideas ?

[ThrelfallYorky]

With some family names occurring in every generation in my lot (sometimes there would be several bearers of the same first names in one single generation, counting cousins etc), there came to be loads of variations e.g: Thomas - Tom - Tommy - Tam - Tammy and so on. I expect the same thing could have happened in most families. Certainly we had William-Will - Bill - Willie - Willam - Billy - Willy . Perhaps that's simply how all these started off, desperate attempts not to confuse family members one with another...?

[muckandtwigs]

A link suggests a Medievil habit of changing letters and also of William 111 being called King Billy,  but is their historic record of him being called King Billy in the 17th cent. or is it a more modern thing.

[LFS]

I was told a Bunty was a hand reared lamb.  So its a pet name!