Originally Posted by j's 05

how dick became a nickname for richard is known and is one of those “knee bone connected to the thigh bone” type progressions, somewhat similar to how the word ‘soccer’ came about.* due to people having to write everything by hand, shortened versions of richard were common, such as ‘ric’ or ‘rich’.* this in turn gave rise to nicknames like ‘richie’, ‘rick’, and ‘ricket’, among others.* people also used to like to use rhyming names; thus, someone who was nicknamed rich might further be nicknamed hitch.* thus, richard -> ric -> rick gave rise to nicknames like dick and hick around the early 13th century. While few today call richards ‘hick’, the nickname ‘dick’ has stuck around, and of course has come to mean many other things as well.* its persistence as associated with richard is probably in part because around the 16th century dick started to be synonymous with ‘man’, ‘lad’, or ‘fellow’, sort of a general name for any ‘tom, dick, or francis” (which by the way appears in shakespeare’s henry iv, written in the late 16th century, with dick at this point firmly established as an “every man” name).* ;-)