I was Charles growing up. When I went away to college, everyone called me C. R. because it was trendy to use initials way back then. But when I moved back to Houston in 1979, everyone called me Chuck.
That’s what I was going to post.
My sister Peggy is named after our grandmother Peggy. Her legal, birth certificate first name is “Peggy.” For most of her 45 years she’s had to argue with various low-level petty bureacrats who insist “but your real name is Margaret.”
I’m surprised she hasn’t strangled one of them yet.
It’s derived a term of affection, that probably derived from “chick(en).” It appeared to attach itself as a nickname for “Charles” because the two words had the same first two letters.
I’m kind of shocked there’s an actual explanation.
Apparently it used to be that the diminutive for a name was -kin, -in, or -cock (heheh). Kind of like the current diminutive is -y. So instead of Johnny like we’d say today, John became Johnkin/Jankin, and from there it got shortened into Jakin and then Jack.
I’m not really a fan of tying Jack to John, anyway. I think it works just fine as a name on its own.
I’m told that Skip is the nickname for Lesley, but I have no evidence, just the word of one guy called ‘Skip.’ I have also known a Francis called ‘Skip,’ so I’m dubious.
I know a Sandy - Scottish nickname for Alexander.
Surely a lot of these just come from the fact that so many people used the same names- as well as the custom of naming after previous generations- so you have 3 Edwards in the family, one gets ‘Ed’, one gets ‘Ted’, and the last becomes ‘Ned’ (apparently a contraction of ‘mine Edward’, if you’re wondering). If you read much history- and note it is often very old names that have so many forms- the same names crop up so often, in some eras, people would have to work out some way of telling 'em all apart, and that means lots of versions, even if they don’t make much sense!