Kip is actually a British nickname; Tuck is short for Tucker. (I think Kip is also a nickname for something, the way Trey is a nickname that indicates the kid is a III, eg John Brown the 3rd.) Those popped into my head first, but there's a variety of short, hard-sounding names: Mike, Mick, Deet (short for Dieter), Erik, Tom, Tate (another surname), Grant, Ken, Cade... I dunno, brain not working so good today.
Perhaps it's just that to American eyes, the name Duane has too many associations with lower-class, ill-educated, lazy drawled-sounding names that aren't sexy at all.
There's a babyname site online, erg, can't remember which one it is now. Babynameworld? Hrm. Whatever, but it's got this marvelous advanced search feature where you can search by number of syllables as well as starting consonant or sound, and ending consonant or sound, along with name's origins or meaning. I'd highly recommend playing with that site.
I've actually known several Kellers. It's a common name in the South, again with the first-name-as-surname. For that reason, you'll see it most often with a common British surname like Williams, Jones, Brown, Smith, etc. (Keller Williams, incidentally, is a really big realty company in the US, so you might want to avoid that combination.)
Dipthongs are when you combine two vowels to create a sound that's neither the first vowel nor the second. The french 'eu' is a dipthong, in that it's not an e-sound and it's not a true u-sound. Adding a w can sometimes create a dipthong, as in 'bawl', where the w changes the a into something more rounded. Every language has dipthongs in there somewhere, though some languages use a whole lotta them and some only use one or two, and other languages further complicate dipthongs (like English does) when you add in accents.
Leslie's a family name of mine, so I have cousins of both genders with that as a first name, too, though I have to say I've always regarded the use of "Les" as a nickname with some distrust. I mean, to basically be calling someone "less"? Sheesh. Then again, I've also known a Gayle (male!) and that was also an old family name, and I'm not sure if that's better or worse than my cousin's inherited name, of Alonzo. I mean, now that is old-fashioned. (No one calls him that. Ever.)
But then again, I almost got named Leroy, and maybe that's a fancy name in french but it's a name that'd get you beaten up during recess if you lived in the US. Snerk.
[kip, tuck: ah, I was thinking of Chip, which is an alternate nickname to Junior -- that is, what you call the younger of two in a family. As in, "chip off the old block". Very much a name associated with American all-around good kids who play touch football and like apple pie, that kind of good clean association. Tuck and Kip are definitely more Brit-names, and Trey is really unusual these days.]
no subject
Perhaps it's just that to American eyes, the name Duane has too many associations with lower-class, ill-educated, lazy drawled-sounding names that aren't sexy at all.
There's a babyname site online, erg, can't remember which one it is now. Babynameworld? Hrm. Whatever, but it's got this marvelous advanced search feature where you can search by number of syllables as well as starting consonant or sound, and ending consonant or sound, along with name's origins or meaning. I'd highly recommend playing with that site.
I've actually known several Kellers. It's a common name in the South, again with the first-name-as-surname. For that reason, you'll see it most often with a common British surname like Williams, Jones, Brown, Smith, etc. (Keller Williams, incidentally, is a really big realty company in the US, so you might want to avoid that combination.)
Dipthongs are when you combine two vowels to create a sound that's neither the first vowel nor the second. The french 'eu' is a dipthong, in that it's not an e-sound and it's not a true u-sound. Adding a w can sometimes create a dipthong, as in 'bawl', where the w changes the a into something more rounded. Every language has dipthongs in there somewhere, though some languages use a whole lotta them and some only use one or two, and other languages further complicate dipthongs (like English does) when you add in accents.
Leslie's a family name of mine, so I have cousins of both genders with that as a first name, too, though I have to say I've always regarded the use of "Les" as a nickname with some distrust. I mean, to basically be calling someone "less"? Sheesh. Then again, I've also known a Gayle (male!) and that was also an old family name, and I'm not sure if that's better or worse than my cousin's inherited name, of Alonzo. I mean, now that is old-fashioned. (No one calls him that. Ever.)
But then again, I almost got named Leroy, and maybe that's a fancy name in french but it's a name that'd get you beaten up during recess if you lived in the US. Snerk.
[kip, tuck: ah, I was thinking of Chip, which is an alternate nickname to Junior -- that is, what you call the younger of two in a family. As in, "chip off the old block". Very much a name associated with American all-around good kids who play touch football and like apple pie, that kind of good clean association. Tuck and Kip are definitely more Brit-names, and Trey is really unusual these days.]