To add to the S/N ratio: Why am I called Lawrence? Not Larry? Well, 6 or 7 generations ago, a family of Liles who could barely spell their own names moved to Missouri with Daniel Boone. Some of them spelled it Lisle, Some of them spelled it Lyle, and so on. Each succedding generation had 12 children until the 1890's. One line resulted in me, Larry Lile, and another line resulted in a distant cousin, Larry Lisle. Larry Lisle got a job at Toastmaster first. When I showed up, utter confusion in the mail room could only be thwarted by me being Lawrence. I kinda liked the new moniker so I started using it everywhere. Ever since Moe, Larry and Curly, the name "Larry" has not seemed very dignified IMHO. "Leisure Suit Larry" did not do anything to improve our reputation either. -- Lawrence Lile Senior Project Engineer Toastmaster, Inc. Jinx Sent by: pic microcontroller discussion list 04/08/2004 08:10 AM Please respond to pic microcontroller discussion list To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU cc: Subject: Re: [OT]: Names (was stirling engines) > Why, the same way that "Robert" becomes "Bob" and > "Richard" becomes "Dick", of course! It's a mystery to > me too... Robert to Bob or Richard to Dick could be explained by bad handwriting. It would be easy to mis-read R as B, so Bob rather than Rob, Dick rather than Rick........ Peg via Margaret -> Meg might also originally have been caused by a mistake Like the Hebridean island of St Kilda. There is no St Kilda. It was originally Tobar Childa (or Skeldur in Norse), but corrupted by English cartographers to S. Kilda. As far fewer people long ago could write or spell than speak, it's understandable how that happens Other hypocoristic (as distinct from nicknames) variations may be the result of a name passing through other languages or dialects I've mentioned this before - I once had to deal with an engineer called Richard Less, who's parents had either a great sense of humour (or something a little blacker) or were simply not thinking Like the woman on TV I saw with the first name La'trene. Sheesh. Bad as a Boy Named Sue (or Sewer) -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details. -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.