Please tell me that Diane went by DeeDee, for the trifecta!
I’ve always found Bunny an odd nickname for a man, and it seems to be linked to both Bernard and Edmund.
Nan for Ann … another one where it’s not as if the name is any shorter.
I have a tiny doubt about that one, maybe – maybe for French-Canadian trappers who traded with Anglos? That could very well be. I have an interest in this, as my family calls me Jack, but hardly anyone else (a few old friends who think it’s amusing). I think it can also be a nickname for Jacob or maybe even James/Jacques, I thought I read somewhere.
Fascinating about the little Jankin becoming Jack. Never heard that. Sounds plausible.
I knew a Lilbert who went by Butch. He explained that he was the third in his family to have the name and nickname. When the original Lilbert was born, his three year old brother called him “Lilbutch.”
In Spanish, Pancho and Paco are short for Francisco.
Nacho is a common name for Ignacio.
I used to think that, but I think it’s more usual as a nickname for Henry. See Prince Harry for example.
Do you have evidence for this? It seems quite convoluted, while the etymological link with Giuseppe/Pepe (which was also my first guess) is much more evident.
As for me, some of my favourite nicknames are the Polish ones. Basia for Barbara, or Gosia for Małgorzata (i.e. Margaret, once again) for example. (Pronounced “Basha” and “Gosha”.) Yes, you see the link to the name they represent, but you wonder what was the process getting there.
No she didn’t but my other cousin Dianne (on my mother’s side) went by Didee, if that counts. 
I think Skip is one of those generic nicknames that can go with a lot of names. The only Skip I know is actually named Charles. But I also know a Charles who goes by “Chick”, and a guy whose given name is Skipper.
Chip
This is what I was told by my SIL, Jose, who is called Pepe by his family.
Evidence? It’s the explanation I’ve always heard, and as for the calendar listings… if you want a Calendario del Sagrado Corazón sent to you, I’ll need your address.
Maite is very common for Maria Teresa or even for Teresa-with-no-Mary, specially in Basque-speaking areas. This is because it’s wordplay as well as a contraction: in Basque, maite means “darling, beloved”. If someone who speaks Basque adresses you as “maitea!” and your name isn’t Teresa, it’s merely the equivalent of a Southerner’s “hi honey”.
As a well-known contributor to this site reports:
It’s just that etymologies from abbreviations are rarely correct, especially with words older than the 20th century. Pepe (or is it Pepé?) for José seems like it’d be older than that.
What I’ve heard, and Wiki agrees, is that some of the nicknames starting with N (Ed to Ned, Ann to Nan, Ellie to Nellie) came about because of a sort of mistake. The possessive pronoun in middle English was * min*, and was used a form of endearment (“oh, mīn Ed, could you please stop by Costco and pick up some soap on your way home today?”). When the possessive was changing to my, people somehow started getting this wrong and hearing it as “my Ned”.
Oddly enough, the word “nickname” itself is apparently victim to something similar. “A nickname” used to be “an ekename”, meaning an increased or additional name.
It also went the other direction – “a napron” became “an apron”
So combining that with the -kin suffix, was ‘a napkin’ originally an ‘ap’?
When Hrothgar spilled boar grease on his war-dress, Hengist said, “Wyrgan not, brōðor – ðere be an ap for ðæt.”
That would work for “napkin” being a small (n)apron, I wonder if that’s the true etymology?
I don’t understand why there’s so much confusion about nicknames being as long (or in some cases, like Ivan to Vanya, longer) than the original names. Nicknames are often terms of endearment, and often suffixes are added for terms-of-endearment names.
Like my name, Katie. One boyfriend called me the rather nauseating Katie-kins (that -kin as a suffix for a name of endearment that gave us Jack from John still survives in English). Assuming that Katie-kins caught on as a real name (thank goodness it didn’t), then eventually we might be calling people named Katie “Kakie” or something.
That “rhyming nickname” process for Margaret is pretty interesting. I never knew that!
Jeremy or Jerry/Gerald, I imagine. I’ve heard Clarkson on Top Gear referred to as “Jezza” a couple of times. Also seen “Gaz” or “Gazza” for Gary.
My grandfather’s name was Norman. Actually, on his birth certificate it was N., but that’s for a different thread. Every one called him Bud. My grandmother said it was because his older sister couldn’t say “brother” clearly so it sounded like Bud when she talked to or about him.
One time my grandmother was repeating the explanation when I happened to be sitting next to my great aunt, the sister in the story. “They’ve been telling people that for as long as I can remember. It’s nonsense. I was six years old when he was born! I could pronounce everything perfectly well. There was an older boy in the neighborhood named Bud Kereger who I thought was just wonderful. I thought they should have named the baby Bud so that’s what I called him.” (Nobody reverted back to calling him anything but Bud.)