So where does Jenny fit in? I thought it was a short for Jennifer

edited for typo

I think Jenny is a varient of Janet.

Jenny was the usual pet form of Jane, certainly in the nineteenth century - one of William Morris's daughters was Jane, always known as Jenny, for example - as well as a certain amount of overlap with Janet, as MaryNew says. I have a Jennet/ Janet (born 1868) in my own family tree, and she could easily have been called Jenny; there was also some use of Jenny as an independent name (birth registration rather than Census).

Yep, all the Jennys on my family tree are actually Jane / Janey / Janet / Jennet / Jeanette. This is in 1840-90s Lancashire.

Apparently my dad's mother was called Janet (known as Jenny) but she told my parents not to use it for any of their children because "it's a coo's name" (that's "cow" in Scots). So they opted for Jennifer.

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Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?

As others have said, Jennifer/Jenifer/Jenefer is the Cornish version of Guinevere. I hve also seen it spelt as Jenepher and Jenever.

Naturally, I have an interest in the name particularly in Jenefer which is a family name.

The first Jenefer in my family was my great grandmother who was born in Lyme Regis in 1848. Why she received the name is a mystery as her parents were Irish. They lived in several places in Devon as well before returning to Ireland. I assume they must have been friendly with a Jenefer or maybe she was the midwife.

I'd always thought it became popular because of Bewitched. I remember the 1960s, and I'd never heard the name Samantha before then. But I've done a quick search on Free BMD and it was becoming popular in the early 1960s, before Bewitched. There's an actress called Samantha Eggar who began her career in the early '60s, but I wouldn't think she was well enough known to kick off a fashion in first names.

Bewitched began in the US in 1964, and it was probably a year or more before it reached the UK. It was probably responsible for the huge increase in popularity of the name in the late '60s and '70s.

Isn't Jen Robins in the Abbey books really Janet? Fairly sure she isn't a Jennifer, anyway.

I think Janet could be a pet form of Jane. I think Mr Rochester calls Jane 'Janet' sometimes.

She is a Janet.

Mr Rochester did call Jane "Janet", but I've never come across anyone else using Janet as a pet name for Jane. I wonder if she called him Eddie, or maybe Teddy ... er, probably not.

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We really must stop eating like this ...

Minds are like parachutes - they only function when open.

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I can only ever think of him as Mr Rochester. Jane Austen's characters call their spouse by their surnames (Wickham) or Mr/Mrs but Charlotte Bronte's era doesn't seem quite so formal. Even so, I can't see them using nicknames or pet names in public.

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Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?

What would you abbreviate Fitzwilliam Darcy to, I wonder . Fitzy? Will?

(Sorry for introducing a lot of irrelevant waffle to this topic )

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We really must stop eating like this ...

Minds are like parachutes - they only function when open.

http://setinthepast.wordpress.com/

I was at school with a boy whose surname was Fitzsimmons, he was universally known as Fitzy, even by the teachers.

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'I'm sorry, I only play for sport.' - Lara Croft

Fiz-bill?

I wouldn't dare!

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Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?

I can't think of him as anything but Darcy.

It's a bit like that lovely part in Emma where she is talking about his name:



And of course that raises the question of what Darcy would want Elizabeth to call him. One wonders what Georgiana calls him.

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The writer's credo: 'Sometimes you've got to sacrifice the things you like' (Delta Goodrem - Born To Try)

Do we know what happens to Mirania after WWII? Did it fall to the Soviets? I think Belsornia did and I always imagine them sharing a border.

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You're scared of mice and spiders, but oh-so-much greater is your fear that one day the two species will cross-breed to form an all-powerful race of mice-spiders, who will immobilize human beings in giant webs in order to steal cheese.

My father, whose name is FitzRoy (WITH the capital R in the middle) was known as Fitz to his immediate family, and, to one very gushy great-aunt (my great-aunt, not his!), "Fitzy DAHling!" which made me giggle....

I finally got around to reading this book properly after skimming through it before.

And yes, I imagine Mirania fell to the Soviets or Elizaveta would have been able to go into exile there with her children. After all, her children are part of the Miranian royal family. It's hinted in the riots that the Bolsheviks had a foothold in the county already.

Sad we don't get to see what happens to Tamara etc but I assume they would also have gone into exile. And maybe Tamara gets to put all that musical training to good use and become a professional violinist.

I liked the book and you can see where and how EBD is preparing for the CS series. The thunderstorm chapter is a bit much though. The artistic temperament causing them all to become hysterical makes them sound like a school of Simones.

I have friends who ended up doing professional training in musical or dramatic colleges and the training really is that intense and they have almost no time to think of anything else. But that was after they had finished 12 years of normal schooling not at the young ages EBD has here.

Cheers,
Joyce

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