Why is William, Billy?

[Malcolm33]

   One name that has some strange variations is AGNES.
   I think the most usual nick name would be Nancy and that is the name that Burns used in his poem "The Soldier's Return" which takes place in Coylton where my great great grandmother Agnes Currie once lived -
   "I thought upon the banks o’ Coil,
    I thought upon my Nancy,"

    But other variations for Agnes are,  Aggie, Nessie, Senga, Una and Oonadh.

[pinefamily]

I always thought Nancy was a variation for Ann or Anne.

[Malcolm33]

I always thought Nancy was a variation for Ann or Anne.

   Apparently that is one of a number of variations.   I just had a quick look on the net and one person has written that their family has used Nancy for Agnes for 10 generations.   It makes research so difficult when a family uses both in different records.   Just something to be on the look out for.

[Billyblue]

My mother's sister Agnes Anne was always known as Sally.

Another of her sisters, Mary Ellen, was always known as Mainie.

And my aunt Georgina was always known as Biddy.


Dawn M

[rosie17]

My mother's name was Agnes and she got called Nancy or Nan Husband's name Alexander and he gets Lexie 

[Fergie38]

My name is Robert but spent most of my life called Bobby.
Never made the connection

[EdCan]

Why Ann for Jane or vice versa. I have a mother and daughter both baptised Jane. Mother married as Jane and both show on census as Jane. However both deaths shown as Ann. I found the mother's death but gave up buying certs for the daughter who never married. By the way I have two sisters- an Ann and a Jane.

[ThrelfallYorky]

I thought for a long time that a dead relative was called "Cecilia", and thought that was such a pretty name and so different from the everyday names the rest of that family seemed to have. Then I found out that it was not that her name was abbreviated from "Cecilia" to "Cissie / Cissy" but rather that she was the eldest sister of the family, and that it was an abbreviation of "Sister" - and her name was a prosaic "Annie Elizabeth", as mundane as those of the rest of that batch! What a let-down.

[Malcolm33]

  This thread demonstrates how we can be misled by familiar names used in a family.    My late aunt wrote to me back in 1983 as follows - "I remember her well.   She came over for her last visit to England when I was about 12 and I remember her talking to my father and these were the words she said.   “Well Ned this will be the last time I shall come over to the old country."

    Aunt Connie was referring to one of her aunts and what she had said about my grandfather, whom I once only knew by his first name of 'Albert'.    It turned out that he had been christened as 'Albert Edwin', yet a letter I now have was signed by him as 'Albert Edward'.   I later learned that he had always hated the name 'Edwin' and changed it himself to Edward.

     For that aunt from America to call him 'Ned' tells me that he must have really stuck to his adopted middle name of 'Edward' even in the afterlife as I shall explain.

     When my late wife Edith whom we always called 'Ede' died in May 2007 I came down to Melbourne from Cairns for a couple of weeks to stay with my daughter.    On the second night I was suddenly woken by Ede shouting out "Malcolm Can You Hear me".    It was very loud and woke me up immediately in something of a fright.  But the room was empty and dark.  The next night the same thing happened to Fiona.   Consequently I decided to go into the city the next day, seek out the VSU and ask for a short reading from a medium.    I had never ever been there before and they wouldn't even take my second name when booking me in.    The first thing I was told by the medium was that my grandfather was there and that his name was Edward.  Then he told me that my father's name was Edward - it was actually John Edward and we never used his second name.    And then came the big shock.   The medium sat upright and asked me very strongly "Who is Edith", then without stopping he went on to say that we called her Eadie or Ede.