ellenkushner | Nicknames from the last century (Reply)

I've been thinking about the way girls in the early 20th century of a certain class/ethnic group all had nicknames of a certain type. Inspired by today's NYTimes obituary for Aurelia Clifton Brown, born 1925, Ardmore, Pennsylvania - known as "Thistle"!

Ardmore (which happens to be the name of the street I grew up on) is right near Bryn Mawr (where I went to college for 2 years) - and for years our Alumnae Magazine was full of the exploits - and then the deaths - of a generation or two of women christened things like Aurelia and Gertrude, but sporting nicknames like Wiggsy and Kitten and Ralph - and, later, Muffin and Bitsy.... (I think "Thistle" caps them all, though! Why wasn't I named Thistle?).

So: Do you have any such nicknames in your family? May I know/steal them?

The novel I'm working on - which draws on aspects of the great and prolific Mary Roberts Rinehart's hilarious & educational classic, BAB: A SUB-DEB* (readable/downloadable here!) - but is set in & around Riverside about 15 years after TPOTS, with a new cast of young main characters (and a bunch of annoying adults you've met before, when they were much younger) . . . . well, in my efforts to make sure that my imaginary city remains a big old MASHUP (because I always wanted it to partake of the best of many periods without belonging to any one of them), I was thinking of giving the girls nicknames like that. Only different. I mean... Thistle! Does it get any better?

But does anyone know how this custom started? I suspect it has something to do with English girls' schools - and I know some of you are experts on the literature of that tradition! - and I also know it wasn't prevalent in, say, 1820 (was it?) . . . any theories of what happened? Did it have something to do with being more like boys?

And do you choose your own? is it given by other girls? does it come to school with you already from your family?

I don't promise to do this, in the end. But it will be fun to learn!

*Is it fair also, I ask, that in the best society, a girl is a Sub-Deb
the year before she comes out, and although mature in mind, and even
maturer in many ways than her older sister, the latter is treated as a
young lady, enjoying many privileges, while the former is treated as a
mere child, in spite, as I have observed, of only 20 months difference? ....

.... I was too strictly raised. I always had a Governess taging along.
Until I came here to school I had never walked to the corner of the next
street unattended. If it wasn't Mademoiselle it was mother's maid, and
if it wasn't either of them, it was mother herself, telling me to hold
my toes out and my shoulder blades in. As I have said, I never knew any
of the Other Sex, except the miserable little beasts at dancing school.
I used to make faces at them when Mademoiselle was putting on my
slippers and pulling out my hair bow. They were totaly uninteresting,
and I used to put pins in my sash, so that they would get scratched. ....

When I was sent away to school, I expected to learn something of life.
But I was disapointed. I do not desire to criticize this Institution of
Learning. It is an excellent one, as is shown by the fact that the best
Families send their daughters here. But to learn life one must know
something of both sides of it, Male and Female.....
-- from BAB: A SUB-DEB