"Chick" = nickname for "Charles"

[Paul Johnston]

I thought of old time baseball players like Chick Gandil of the
"Black Sox" and contemporary Chick Fewster of the 1920 Dodgers.
Alas, neither was a Charles.  I think, however, the Scottish comedian
Chic(k) Murray was, though, and there's a Glaswegian lower-division
footballer (soccer player) named Chic Connolly who is also known as
Charlie, so it's still alive over there--and you never hear Chuck there.

Paul Johnston
On Sep 18, 2006, at 8:14 PM, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "Chick" = nickname for "Charles"
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> On Sep 18, 2006, at 4:49 PM, Jon Lighter wrote:
>
>> An "early" printed ex. of this (obs.?) U.S. alternative to "Chuck":
>
> not entirely obsolete.  Yale professor Charles Perrow, the author of
> the wonderful Normal Accidents, was known as Chick when he was an
> undergraduate at Black Rock College, and is sometimes so called
> today.  the story, as i recall it, was that when he arrived at Black
> Rock, there was already a Charles, a Charlie, and a Chuck, and it was
> a small place, so he had to be something else, hence Chick.
>
> arnold
>
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