Sorry — I missed the next paragraph you wrote. That’s completely new to me and I haven’t heard or read of that elsewhere.
Way back in the day I was in a class with two “Stephens.”
One pronounced it “Steven” and the other pronounced it “Steffen” and either would correct the teacher when she called roll.
Thanks, all. Nothing on my theory that “Stephen” led to “Steve” which led to the back-formation “Steven”?
My middle name is Stephen, pronounced Steven.
My impression from all the posted info was that “Stephen” produced/evolved into “Steven” and “Steve” is short for the latter. (I know a Stephen, prounced Steven, whom everybody calls “Steve”).
I don’t think so - but I did finally remember the word pair I wanted to bring up . Vial and phial - both mean the same thing, and they were pronounced differently but nowadays, “phial” has basically disappeared in the US and my guess is that anyone reading aloud in a a context where they know the meaning is going to assume it’s a matter of alternate spellings of the same word and pronounce both as “vial”. My guess is that something similar happened to the “Steffen” pronunciation, especially since the people I’ve known who use that pronunciation have immigrant parents.
I agree with this. Steve appears to be rarely used before the second half of the 19th century.
Going through newspapers.com for the entire 18th century I found exactly one hit for Steve, in a 1772 Charleston paper mentioning a Mr. Steve: Coffee-House. Every other Steve was part of a last name, Stevens or Stevenson. Stephen, however, was ridiculously common. Both Stevenson and Stephenson are found, with Stephenson more numerous. That implies that both versions were pronounced identically so that Stephen’s son became Stevenson with no alteration needed.
Ngrams aren’t much help. All the earliest hits for Steve I checked seem to be false hits.
If you’re looking for a back-formation, my guess is that Steven as a first name is backformed from Stevenson (or Stevens) as a last name, with the shortened nickname Steve a much later form.
@slicedalone, is this theory based on any research or is it just a feeling?
Here’s an interesting exchange on the topic:
Just a feeling, or as I put it earlier, just a conjecture. Seems a logical way for that “v” to have gotten in there originally, based on the way that nicknames often change, rather than just shorten, the given name, “Dick” for “Richard,” “Bill” for “William,” “Bob” for “Robert.”
But none of those spawned a longer version of the name, so not a real precedent.
I thought that was where the name “Dixon” (and “Nixon”) came from–Richard > Rick > Dick > Dick’s son > Dixon
No?
But the family name Stevenson almost surely came from Steven’s son much like Jackson, Johnson, Richardson, etc. Those names are very common in English.
So do I. Stephen King, for example, is pronounced “Steven,” and I believe he goes by “Steve” when among friends. And the “Steves” of Steve Allen, Steve Martin, and Steve Harvey are all short for “Stephen.” In fact, I suspect the majority of Steves are Stephens. (Whereas I am an actual Steven.)
Of course, while the Greek phi is usually pronounced like “f” in English words deriving from Greek, that wasn’t the original pronunciation. There’s a reason why it’s transcribed as “phi” instead of “fi”: Originally, it was an aspirated pi sound.
I believe that it originated as Dickson and then became the similar-sounding Dixon. Again, not a first name and not a back-formation.
As I said, it almost surely came from Stephen’s son and people only later replaced the “ph” with a “v”, similar to Dickson/Dixon and Nickson/Nixon.
My legal name is Steven. I prefer to be called Steven in professional contexts, and whatever nickname you think is appropriate outside of professional context (I’ve had a few). There are still people who will address me as “Steve” or “Stephen”. Even my own grandparents would address things to me with “Stephen”. This led me to believe that “Steven” is a modern creation that most old people did not experience. At one point in time I found evidence for this in the most popular baby names or some such. I’ll present my evidence from the Social Security names by decade tables:
1880s: Stephen is 89th. Neither Steve nor Steven make the list (top 200)
1890s: Stephen is 105th. Steve is 197th. Steven is not on the list.
1900s: Stephen is 96th. Steve is 157th. Steven is not on the list.
1910s: Stephen is 89th. Steve is 116th. Steven is not on the list.
1920s: Stephen is 116th. Steve is 144th. Steven is not on the list.
1930s: Stephen is 105th. Steve is 171st. Steven is not on the list.
1940s: Stephen is 25th. Steven is 29th. Steve is 79th
I think it’s clear that the name became much much more popular in the 1940s, and that Steven appeared from out of nowhere. My guess is that the spelling Steven is mostly a backformation from Steve being short from Steven, and that there was one famous person, or maybe fictional character, in particular that triggered it, but I can’t determine who that might have been.
Steven existed at a low level before 1940, as can be seen at Steven Name Meaning, Origin, Popularity, Boy Names Like Steven - Mama Natural but Stephen was clearly more popular before the sudden increase around 1940 as can be seen on the similar Stephen Name Meaning, Origin, Popularity, Boy Names Like Stephen - Mama Natural . Whatever happened around 1940 made Steven burst into popularity, but also caused Stephen to greatly increase in popularity as well, and the short form Steve even increased in popularity somewhat.
That looks like it matches what Wikipedia says.
I’m not so sure of this looking at the details. It might have just been a name that slowly and inexplicably became more popular. There’s clearly an uptick starting in 1935 where it went from 0.03% on average to 0.038%, then continued to climb slowly for many years, reaching 0.132% in 1940, 0.436% in 1945, 1.278% in 1950, and peaked in 1955 at 1.811%. If there was one particular person that caused the increase, it’s strange that there’s a very clear, though small, increase in 1935 but that it took decades for the wave to crest.
One factor may be the introduction in 1941 of Steve Rogers, A. K. A. Captain America.
A quick scan through wikipedia’s list of Steves that could be influencing popular culture by the 1940s has Steve Allen (b. 1921) and Steve Cannon (b.1927), perhaps Steve MacGordon (Died 1916). Most Steves on the list were born in the 1940s or later but Steve McQueen was born in 1930. Too late to affect 1940s parent I expect.
The way you’re describing ph is more like an aspirated p, which is how it’s pronounced in the Philippines. (Pill-I-pines.) Thai also transliterates this sound to ph, as in Phu Ket (poo-ket). I can’t think of an example of English doing this though.