I noticed it a long time ago, but I never mentioned it, or wrote about it, until now.
Fewer Dicks are around any more.
Dick is a nickname for the given name of Richard. According to the site associatedcontent.com, here is how it came to be:Medieval times brought about Dick as a nickname for Richard. The Normans, descendents of Vikings who resided in northern France, had a unique way of trilling their "r" sounds. When the English attempted to pronounce Richard as the Normans did, it was reported that they could not quite do it correctly and the "r" came off sounding like a "d". Thus Dick became a pet name for Richard.
My grandfather was named Richard. My father had two good friends named Richard. A good friend has a father named Richard. All were nicknamed Dick.
But as for men of my age, the nickname for Richard is mostly Rick and sometimes Rich.
I truly don't know offhand why it changed. I ought to do research on it.
But I believe it has come to this for these two reasons:
- Dick as a synonym for penis
- A man who's a fool and ass.
- Richard Milhous Nixon, who used to be the most evil man who ran the U.S. government until Dick Cheney.
While I believe fewer men named Dick walk the earth, I bet the same percentage of men who are dicks are around. Because a dick by any other name is a dick.
once, i was talking with the dental technician while she was cleaning my teeth. she's personable and likes to pass the time with conversation -- that is, when the patient's mouth isn't busy -- and we were talking about people's names.
i had mentioned that for women born in the 1950s, the decade i was born, the most popular names, in alphabetical order, were cynthia, deborah, karen and linda or variations of them.
this came to mind last week, and i wanted to check if that was true.
i grew up in a small town in central indiana and went to a high school that had from 800 students when i was a freshman to 1,100 students when i was a senior and after my high school had merged with another.
i checked in my yearbooks, where all of my fellow students were born from 1950 to 1957. the most popular name was deborah -- or variations like debbie or debra. 37 girls had that name.
the second most popular name was catherine or katherine or variations of them; 24 girls were named that. somehow, that escaped me.
right behind it was cynthia, cindy or variations of it. 23 girls had that name.
sixteen girls were named linda while only eight girls were named karen.
other popular names of girls back then were carol, cheryl, connie (rarely constance), nancy, teresa, and victoria.
