Ahypocorism (/haɪˈpɒkərɪzəm/hy-POK-ər-iz-əm or/ˌhaɪpəˈkɒrɪzəm/HY-pə-KORR-iz-əm; fromAncient Greekὑποκόρισμαhypokórisma; sometimes alsohypocoristic), orpet name, is a name used to show affection for a person.[1][2] It may be adiminutive form of a person's name, such asIzzy for Isabel orBob for Robert, or it may be unrelated.
Etymologically, the termhypocorism is from Ancient Greekὑποκόρισμα (hypokórisma), fromὑποκορίζεσθαι (hypokorízesthai), meaning 'to call by endearing names'. The prefixhypo- refers in this case to creating a diminutive, something that is smaller in a tender or affectionate sense; the rootkorízesthai originates in the Greek for 'to caress' or 'to treat with tokens of affection', and is related to the wordsκόρος (kóros) 'boy, youth' andκόρη (kórē) 'girl, young woman'.
Inlinguistics, the term can be used more specifically to refer to themorphological process by which the standard form of the word is transformed into a form denotingaffection, or to words resulting from this process. In English, a word is oftenclipped down to a closedmonosyllable and thensuffixed with-y/-ie (phonologically/-i/).[3] Sometimes the suffix-o is included as well as other forms[4][5][6] or templates.[7]
Hypocoristics are often affective in meaning and are particularly common inAustralian English, but can be used for various purposes in differentsemantic fields, including personal names, place names, and nouns.[4] Hypocorisms are usually considered distinct from diminutives, but they can also overlap.[6][4]
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