What's the deal with these names? How does Chuck become short for Charles? Bill for William? Harry for Henry?

Question

I would think Will would be short for William but not Bill. Can anyone enlighten me?

Answer 1

So that all the different Williams can be told apart. If you are the third William in a small village, and somebody else is already know as Will, what do you call yourself? Why some abbreviations survived, I'm afraid I can't really tell you. I guess people just liked them better.

Answer 2

Actually, it's not just the contraction, it's also a slang. It makes the name less formal, ans thus the person seems more approachable.

Would you rather have to remember Queen Victoria of the English isles, or Vicky, that chick who had it all from England? Makes a bit of a difference heh?

Watch out for Elizabeth though. Could go Eliza, or Lisa, or Liza, or Beth.

Answer 3

The one that typically causes the most consternation is "Bill", alongside the expected "Will" for "William"

RHYMING NICKNAMES

"Bill" is a "rhyming nickname" --part of a great 13th-14th century trend, which also gave us unusual forms like Polly from Molly, Bob, Dob(bes) and Hob(bes) from Rob (from Robert), Dick and Hick for Richard, Hodge from Roger, Peg from Meg (Margaret), and Polly from Molly (for Mary).

compare:
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mdick.html
http://www.behindthename.com/bb/arcview.php?id=11027&board=gen

For other forms of "letter swapping" to create nicknames, and a variety of other methods by which English nicknames developed see:
http://www.geocities.com/edgarbook/names/other/nicknames.html

By the way, note how common b, p, h and d are as the substitute letters (from the list above - Bob, Hob, Dob, Dick).

Apparently ONE impetus in the letter swapping at that particular time was a dislike amongst the native English for the harsh Norman French "r". Note how many nicknames made substitutions for r's -- not only at the beginning of words [Richard, Robert], but in the middle of them -- Mary > Molly, Sarah > Sally/Sadie, Dorothy > Dolly; Harold/Harry (> Hal).

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WILLIAM - and the relationship of w, v, b

In the case of "Will(iam)", there might be an even better explanation for THIS rhyming substitution --the /w/ and /b/ sounds are related. Both sounds are made using the two lips (so called "bilabials").

In fact, if you look around you'll discover that the sound represented by "w" has varied with time and place, in many cases coming extremely close to the /b/ sound. It might even end up replaced by the /b/. The oldest example I know of is in Akkadian [= the 'Assyro-Babylonian' language] in which an earlier /w/ sound became a /b/ in some later forms of the language.

Perhaps more to the point here -- Compare how "w" is pronounced as /v/ in several Germanic languages. In particular, consider the German pronunciation of the equivalent name "Wilhelm" (beginning with the /v/ sound). The /v/ sound is the same as the /b/ sound, except that for the latter you add the voice.

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HARRY

The Norman French connection already mentioned may also help explain how we end up with "Harry" for "Henry". Actually, if recall that the early kings with this name would mainly have spoken (Norman) French, and recall how the French pronounce the equivalent name "Henri"--NOT with the English /n/ sound-- you can see how that sound might be dropped to give us "Harry". This may also have been influenced by the use of Harry as a nickname for the Old Germanic name "Harold". (The last point would help even more with explaining the nickname "Hal", which apparently was first a nickname for "Harold", before being used for Henry.)
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CHUCK

I don't have a specific set of forms to explain this one, but;

The opening "ch" hardly needs explanation

I don't think the u is difficult either, since here it indicates the sound "uh", not that far from the "ah" of "Charles".

As for the dropping of the original ending -- that's standard fare for nicknames. But also, as with other forms already mentioned that were based on original FRENCH forms of the name, the fact that the French sounds were not like English ones may have encouraged the substitution. And note that, once again, they used "ck" (the /k/ sound). I think it likely that in THIS case it had nothing to do with the name Charles itself, but was formed by analogy with other nicknames ended this way, e.g., Dick/Rick for Richard, Jack for John.