Why is Dick short for Richard?

In the 1990s, when I worked for a British company, one Mr Dick Howe was the general manager of our office. He introduced himself as Dick Howe, everyone called him by that name. In official correspondence, though, he was Richard Howe. His secretary, with a developed faculty for curiosity, once said to me: “I can understand Stephen becoming Steve, Andrew becoming Andy, Jim short for Jamie, but why is Dick the nickname for Richard? Don’t you find it odd?”

“Not really,” I said, “because my mother is a professor of the Sanskrit language.”

Linguistics and Phonetics

The world of languages and sounds is immensely vast, like an ocean. It’s a fascinating world for the inquisitive. Why, for example, do the Christian languages (English, German, Russian and others) have CAPITAL and small letters, but not Hindu, Buddhist or Islamic languages? Why are Islamic languages written from right to left, their books begin on what we consider the last page? Why the English alphabet is written in that order, I mean starting with A, then B, C… and going up to Z. Is there any logic to it? In this article, I’ll confine myself essentially to explaining why Richard becomes Dick.  I’ll also present my theory on the sequence of the letters in the English alphabet.

व ब यो अभेदः (No difference between V and B)

As a child, this was one of the Sanskrit sayings I had heard from my mother, the Sanskrit professor. My official name Ravindra was similar to that of the noble-winner Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore. In Bengali, it is shortened as Rabi. Vijay becomes Bijoy, Veena becomes Beena, Bengalis pray to lord Bishnu, and the Bangladeshi airline is called Biman (Viman in Marathi). When I first visited Wawel, the magnificent royal castle complex in Krakow, I remembered the V and B rule and wondered if Wawel comes from Babel, the biblical mythical tower which, in pictures, looks quite similar.

B is a labial sound, meaning the upper and lower lip need to touch for making it. Now hold your fingers between the lips, and try saying B. Others will hear it as a ‘V’ (or W) sound.

Interesting to note that in Russian and Greek languages the letter V is written as “B”. This is how Victoria looks in those languages: Виктория/ Βικτόρια.

When words migrated from Latin to Italian, many of them replaced B with V. (e.g. Cabbalous, a horse, became Cavallo. Cavallo is also the root of the word Cavalry). The Italians were probably too lazy to purse their lips every time.

You’ll see similar etymological connections between ‘move’ and ‘mobile’.

Talking about English names, this rule explains why William Jefferson Clinton became President Bill Clinton. William becomes Will, and then Will turns into Bill. Because there is no difference between w and b sounds.

(W, in fact, was v or u written two times and hence called “double-u”. Texans have shortened double to dub, and pronounce the letter ‘W’ as Dub-ya. That’s how the 43^rd president of the USA got his nickname – from his middle initial.) 

Sanskrit language’s Devnagari alphabet

The human race spoke for thousands of years before developing the ability to transcribe the sounds or read them. The printed word should not dictate how we speak; it should represent how we speak. Among the languages I know, Sanskrit and its daughter languages (Marathi, Hindi and others) have the most scientific alphabet – the Devnagari script. It is phonetic and represents the sounds systematically. Out of the 33 consonants, 25 consonants fall into five rows of five letters each, every row transcribing sounds made from the throat, palate, roof of the mouth, teeth and lips respectively.

You can listen to the alphabet in this 11 minute clip, or if short of time, this 40 second alphabet song.

					Nasal	Slight contact	Slightly open
Throat	K	Kh	G	Gh	ṅ		H
Palate	C	Ch	J	Jh	ñ	Y	ś
Cerebral	T	Th	D	Dh	ṇ	R	ṣ
Teeth	t	th	d	dh	n	L	s
Lips	P	Ph	B	Bh	M	V or W

Kiss/ Bunkhouse/ Good/ Loghouse/ sing

Chair/ Coachhorse/ joy/ hedgehog/ enjoy

Tub/ anthill/dog/ redhead/hand (In the ‘Dental’ row only n (nose) in English)

Pick/uphill/be/clubhouse/amble

Yum/rum/luck/wine

ship/ (ṣ is absent in English)/ seek / Ham  

The beauty of the Sanskrit table 

You’ll notice the sound B and V (or W) are in the same row, both made by joining the lips. When saying B, lips make a full contact; in V they make a slight contact.

Another similar pair from the palate row is ‘J’ and ‘Y’. In North India and Bengal, Yashvant becomes Jaswant, and a yoga practitioner is a Jogi rather than yogi. In the Polish language, names written with J are pronounced as Y, for example Justina (Yustina), Johanna (Yohanna). In other cultures, you have Jacob and Yakob, Joseph and Yoseph, Jasmine and Yasmin. In Marathi, Jesus Christ is called Yeshu Christ.

I’ll turn to another pair which is not a Sanskrit saying – G and H. In the Russian language, sound H is surprisingly absent, and often replaced by G. The monster was Gitler, the film world is Gollywood, the names of the countries are Golland (ia), GongKong, Gonduras, and the highest mountains in the world are Gimalayas. It should not shock you to learn that Garry Kasparov and Harry Potter have the same name.

Now, if you look at the above table, you will find G and H are in the same row – the throat row. G is pronounced with a full contact, whereas in saying H, the contact is slightly open.

The English Alphabet 

Abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz= 26 letters

The number 26 can be split only as 13x2 (abcdefghijklm/ nopqrstuvwxyz) which is equally inane.

In my school days, when I thought over this problem, this is how I had classified the English Alphabet.  Two groups of four letters each, and three groups of six letters each, with a vowel to head each group. This appeared to be the most mathematical arrangement.

A	E	I	O	U
B	F	J	P	V
C	G	K	Q	W
D	H	L	R	X
		M	S	Y
		N	T	Z

As an adult interested in languages, I refined the above table as:

Vowels	A	E	I	O	U
Lips	B	F	J	P	V
Throat	C	G	K	Q	W
Cerebral	D	H	L	R	X
			M	S	Y
			N	T	Z

You’ll notice that apart from the five vowels, four letters fall in the lips row (including B and V), and four letters in the throat row (C when pronounced as K). The rest of the table is fairly messy. Latin script was not as scientifically constructed as Devnagari. The above arrangement makes the best sense of the English alphabet’s order.

In my school days, I had spent months before “inventing” the binomial theorem. Later, I was devastated to learn it already existed. (There was no internet, no Google and no Wikipedia). This time, I have checked the internet endlessly, and have found no evidence that anyone has come close to explaining the order in the English alphabet. It’s possible that all you have read here already exists somewhere else. Until it is found, I would like to take credit for it.

Genetic or acquired

A mother is the first one to teach her child how to say words. Our mother tongue, our first language, is the one we learn “naturally”.  Grammar, conjugation of verbs, cases of nouns, punctuation rules… none of that is needed. Our mother tongue normally defines the way we pronounce sounds. This is more a result of environment than genetics. My relatives born in the USA speak English like Americans. Despite their best effort, they are unable to pronounce certain Indian sounds.

In the old days, communication was only oral. People lived in tribes or clans. As recently as when Jesus Christ was born, the world had fewer than 200 million inhabitants, with only 28 million living in Europe. Not a single person lived in North America, Latin America, Australia and New Zealand. (That is why these places have languages borrowed from Europe).

I presume it was good enough for one influential person from the clan to mispronounce a sound. Or to mishear a sound from someone else. B can be misheard as V, J can be mispronounced as Y or in case of a Russian tribal chief, Homer can be mistakenly called as Gomer. The entire tribe then begins to pronounce that word as their leader does, and phonetics alter. Over the years, the throat, palate, mouth, teeth and lips get trained to produce sounds in a certain way. Until someone more influential comes across and changes them further.

R and D 

In this letter swapping game, since the middle ages, R could be swapped for D. You will note in the Devnagari table both sounds are cerebral or made from the inner roof of the mouth. D is said with the tongue making a full contact with the roof, and only a slight contact when saying R. Surprisingly, in the English alphabet arrangement suggested by me, D and R are again in the same row.

Spanish language has an “R” that sounds like D to the foreigners.

This phenomenon has contributed to Sarah being shortened as Sadie. Richard was first shortened as Rick and then Dick.

Ravi