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source: The Atchison Globe, March 9, 1878.

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A selection of strange and cryptic personal ads from The New York Herald, 1860s to 1890s. 8/?

[yeoldenews]

(source: The Atchison Globe, May 15, 1878.)

(source: The Atchison Globe, May 16, 1878.)

[yeoldenews]

A selection of strange and cryptic personal ads from The New York Herald, 1860s to 1890s. 4/?

[yeoldenews]

A selection of strange and cryptic personal ads from The New York Herald, 1860s to 1890s. 5/?

[yeoldenews]

A selection of looks from the 18th Century equivalent of the MET Gala (aka The Queen's Drawing Room) in March 1789.

(To help with your mental images - this would have been roughly the court silhouette at the time.)

Queen Charlotte - "Was dressed in purple, silver and orange body and train; the petticoat likewise of purple and silver, richly embroidered upon crape. Her Majesty’s head-dress was the most superb and beautiful that ever appeared at Court. A bandeau of purple sattin was fastened around the cap, with a motto in diamonds of “GOD SAVE THE KING.

Round the Queen’s neck was a medallion, tied with a double row of gold chain, and across her shoulders was another chain of three rows of pearls, and five rows of diamonds fastened low behind, with a fine miniature portrait of the KING, studded with diamonds, hanging in front. The tippet was of fine lace, and fastened with the letter G. in diamonds."

The Duchess of Gordon - "White sattin, superbly spangled in gold, and drawn up with a bandeau of the most costly embroidery, imitating the sun [in] the fullness of its glory. The petticoat was festooned in a beautiful manner with branches of oak."

The Duchess of Devonshire - "A white sattin petticoat most superbly embroidered with wreaths of foil, flowers and stones, the gown of dark green sattin, richly embroidered with spangles; and a most beautiful diamond stomacher."

Lady Lloyd - "A crape petticoat, over one of white sattin, with stripes of purple velvet, ornamented with gold and stones, representing peacock feathers. The train purple, trimmed with crape.

Her Ladyship's cap had a painting, describing Britannia kneeling and offering praises to heaven for the recovery of the King, very richly ornamented with diamonds, blond, flowers, and feathers. In the front, "Dieu nous le rend," (God restores him to us,) embroidered in gold letters."

Mr. Pitt - "A green and rose striped velvet, richly embroidered with gold and silver stones; the waistcoat of white satin, embroidered as the coat."

The Hon. Mr. Edgecumbe - "A blue and brown shaded velvet, most superbly embroidered with diamonds and point lace, with beautiful bouquets of flowers; the waistcoat of white satin, embroidered the same"

Sir John Marriott - "Sea green striped velvet, with gold tissue embroidered waistcoat."

and my personal best dressed -

The Duchess of Rutland (who was making her first appearance at court since the death of her husband) - "The time allotted by the decree of fashion for customary suits of solemn black, and all the trappings of widowed woe, being expired, her Grace, lovely in her person, and attractive in her manners, came forward in all the fullness of splendor, and in imitation of the Heavens when they declare, by a rainbow, that the tears of the sky have stopped, wore a dress of embroidered crape, fashioned in such a manner as to resemble that variegated sign of an unclouded atmosphere. But we are at a loss to find out what was meant by the gold-spangled darts of lightning that appeared through this rainbow, unless that her Grace meant them as emblematical of what her eyes can do, now that the day of weeping’s over. To write, however, in more plain terms, we shall state exactly what her Grace had on. It was an embroidered crape, something in imitation of a rainbow, having variety in its colours, and being ornamented with gold spangles which really appeared like darts of lightning through the crape, and gave it a most superb appearance. Her head-dress of white crape, with a towering branch of ostrich feathers, and the motto of God save the King,  in white and gold."

(source: The Times, March 27, 1789.)

[yeoldenews]

The last lines of a review for the new film Star Wars.

(source: The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 25, 1977.)

[yeoldenews]

A selection of strange and cryptic personal ads from The New York Herald, 1860s to 1890s. 7/?

[yeoldenews]

A selection of strange and cryptic personal ads from The New York Herald, 1860s to 1890s. 3/?

[yeoldenews]

(source: The Schenectady Cabinet, January 6, 1819.)

[yeoldenews]

source: The Norfolk and Portsmouth Herald, September 18, 1811.

[yeoldenews]

I feel like we need to stop Twitter callouts and go back to publishing them in the newspaper like gentlemen.

(source: The Frederick Hornet, September 27, 1803.)

[yeoldenews]

My original plan was to follow up my big article on Regency era given names right away with one about Regency era nicknames. I figured there was probably a decent amount out there about what common nicknames were used during what time periods, and that the research would take me a couple weeks at most. Ha. Hahahahahahaha.

So here I am three months later with 24 pages of typed notes, two huge spreadsheets, literally hundreds of sources, and still no conclusive evidence of where the hell Sukey came from.

I, ever the avid ignorer of sunk-cost fallacy, still plan to finish this project (largely because of how frustrated I am that no one’s ever written about it before) - but it’s probably going to be a while. 

While I'm finishing this up, in order to not disappear entirely, I’m going to be instituting a Throwback (insert random day of the week). In the past I have generally avoided reposting things, but I recently received an email from tumblr stating that this blog is now 14 years old. So, considering that there may now be posts on this blog older than some of the people reading them, I’m thinking there are probably quite a few old posts that people missed the first time around. Possibly because they were toddlers.

If you need me in the meantime, I’ll be fighting the name Alexander in a Denny’s parking lot.

[yeoldenews]

Yet another selection of some of the better names I've come across in Regency era newspapers recently.

[yeoldenews]

I found something fascinating and I was wondering if you'd come across any of these: https://youtu.be/vlurcp_qiSg?si=dDyD0jQ6C2X5DXFh

(The link goes to a YouTube video by Dime Store Adventures about the story behind the linotype keysmash "etaoin shrdlu" that often appears as a typo in old newspapers.)

I have definitely seen these around from time to time, but didn't know the phrase had such a cult following in newspaper printing lore.

That was very interesting! Thanks for the link.

[yeoldenews]

The craziest nickname i know of even more of of leftfield than Peg for Margaret, is Tuck for William. Can you explain where that one came from?

While I've seen a few scattered Williams who go by Tuck, I've never seen any formal association with the name William.

I feel like English has too many terms for nicknames (diminutive, hypocorism, sobriquet, pet name, etc.) which either have no firm definitions, or they have definitions that largely overlap - which leads to a lot of confusion as to exactly what type of nickname you're talking about.

For example: my given name is Samantha, but my family calls me Sissy. Sissy is my (a person named Samantha's) nickname, but that doesn't mean Sissy is a nickname for Samantha.

So while Tuck may be a person named William's nickname, it isn't a nickname for William (at least not that I've ever come across).

And Peg may seem odd, but it's actually pretty straight-forward linguistically:

Margaret was shortened Marg, Marg became Mag due to many British dialects lacking rhoticity, Mag became Meg as a result of the Great Vowel Shift, and Meg rhymes with Peg and people really, really like rhyming stuff.

[yeoldenews]

Did Jack not come from the French version of john 'Jaques'?

This is a centuries' old scholarly debate, the short answer of which is most likely no.

First off a correction - Jacques is actually the French form of James, not John (which is Jean).

There appears to have been some discussion in the 19th century as to whether Jack may have originated as a nickname for James and only became associated with John later on (much as Hank originated as a nickname for John before it became associated with Henry) - but later research seems to discount this theory.

The seminal work on this subject is a paper/booklet titled The Pedigree of 'Jack' and of Various Allied Names written by English librarian E. W. B. Nicholson in 1892.

In his research Nicholson found "no recorded instance of Jack, Jak, Jacke or Jakke ever being used to represent Jacques or James".

That being said - names don't develop in a vacuum, nor in laboratory conditions. It's entirely possible that Medieval Englishmen being exposed to the name Jacques influenced the shortening of Jackin to Jack - but short of a time machine trip to ask someone why they chose to go by Jack and not Jackin, it's kind of impossible to prove one way or another.