11 baby names that have very unexpected diminutives
Names are often extended, shortened or ‘riffed-off’ in the name of displaying intimacy and these tweaked names are known as diminutives (or ‘pet names’).
Some seemingly common baby names end up with very surprising diminutives which are arrived at by a few natty linguistic shifts. Let us take you through a few …
Peggy and Daisy are diminutive forms of Margaret
Margaret has a bunch of diminutive names, some of them you can probably guess but others might surprise you.
Margaret becomes Meg, Peg, Peggy, Daisy, Maggie, Marge, Mags, Moll, Greta or Rita through various linguistic gymnastics and associations.
Margaret becomes Meggie which rhymes with Peggy so that’s how we get there.
Think of the plant Marguerite Daisy and you can see how Daisy became a diminutive of Margaret.
Greta gets there because of similar sound patterning and similar letters.