I’ve just been reading some short stories of the late P.G. Wodehouse, and I had a couple of questions:
What does Jno. as a title mean? As in Jno. Henry Rodman.
How is “damme”, which seems to be a variant of “damn”, pronounced? I’ve seen it in Gilbert and Sullivan as well, and the performer pronounced it “dammy”. He might have been trying to be funny though.
Jenero? As in: “Yo! Jenero Schwartzkopf!”
Ba-dum BUM!
::ducks and covers::
Damme is pronounced with two syllables. It is derived from “damn me.”
According to my Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary (9th ed.), “Jno” is an abbreviation for John. 
Doesn’t say whether it’s a Britishism. I’ve never run across it before.
“Jno” isn’t listed in the OED.
“damme” is just a variant spelling of “damn” or “damned” and pronounced the same way. In lots of 19th Century British books, it’s written as “d———” rather like we might write "fk" today, as if the word were somehow made less shocking by the omission of a couple of letters. Wodehouse might have preferred the variant spelling thinking it more genteel than “damn”. It’s ck sing mer f***ers like him who are ruining the language.
Jno. is a (somewhat tortured) abbrievation for “Jonathan/Jonathon.” I’ve seen it in a few 16th-century documents, but I had no idea that, like “Th.” and “Wm.”, it survived to Wodehouse’s time.
I have to disagree with TomH and go with bibliophage on damme. After reading almost exactly a butt-load of Wodehouse it was pretty clear to me that the usage was “dam’me” and not simply a silly misspelling of “damn” for modesty’s sake.
And to respond to Duke, I’m sure “Jno.” survived to Wodehouse’s time as an affectation: he means to provide insight into the character by his usage.
It may be a peculiarity of Wodehouse’s to use “damme” as a contraction of “damn me”, but teh OED gives it as a variant spelling of “damn” and nothing else.
That’s strange because the New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary says
You’re quite right, bibliophage. I looked up “damme” in an inferior (but lighter) dictionary and got it only as a variant spelling of “damn”. I only looked in the OED when I couldn’t find “Jno” in Collins and I didn’t bother to check “damme” again. I must have been mistaken about looking up “damme” in the OED in my earlier post: I had looked it up but not in that dictionary.
Anyway, my mistake. Still nothing for “Jno”, though.
‘Jno.’ is simply the standard abbreviation for John, in the same way that ‘Wm.’ stands for William etc. It is now not so much obsolete as just old-fashioned. It would still have been in common use in Wodehouse’s day and can still sometimes be seen in Britain on old shop signs. The equivalent abbreviation for Jonathan is ‘Jnoth.’
Thanx for providing new means of torture for John… uhm…
Jno … right?
tehehe evil…
dodgy