"Tristan" now feminine given name

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:46 AM -0500 2/25/06, sagehen wrote:
>  >At 11:55 AM -0800 2/24/06, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>>Except for JFK, I've never known a "John" who was called "Jack."  In
>>>the first class I ever taught I had a "Jack," but that was actually
>>>his given name.  So far as I can recall, I've known only one other
>>>"Jack" (also his given name), and that was in the '50s.
>>>
>>>    JL
>>
>>the linguist Jack Hoeksema is officially Jacob, but perhaps that's a
>>distinct Dutch pattern of hypocoristic.
>>
>>LH
>>
>  ~~~~~~~~~~~
>I meant to add to my original note on this that Jack  was also frequently
>the nickname for Jacob.  I wasn't as aware of this, growing up in the
>midwest, as I became later with wider acquaintance with people from both
>east & west coasts.  I was rebuked once, in one of my first fulltime jobs,
>for goyisch insularity for having assumed that a particular Jack, that I
>and my employer both knew, was "properly" named John.
>Given that James & Jacob are forms of the same name, you'd think that
>"Jack" might sometimes be bestowed on Jameses, but I've never run into one.
>Alison
>
It took me a while to figure out that "St. Jacques" (as in the
eponymous Rue in Paris's Latin Quarter) is in fact St. James.

larry

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