Why is the new PM called Andy, not Andrew Burnham?

Burnham is a family name which has clear toponymic sources, going back many hundreds of years to the Old English period. As a place-name, it originally meant “homestead with or by a stream”, where burn/bourne signified a stream or rivulet.

There are seven villages called Burnham clustered together on the north-west coast of the county of Norfolk alone – one of them the birthplace of Admiral Lord Nelson – as well as several other villages of that name elsewhere in England, including in Buckinghamshire, Essex and Somerset.

As to the very much more recent first name “Andy”, this has probably not been around for much more than a century or two. I have written before on the subject of hypocoristics, otherwise known as “pet names”, which express familiarity and affection, as well as informality, and are often used with children.

Some British given names seem to be much more frequently converted into hypocoristics than others. It seems to me that it is much more common in this country for Michael to become Mike than for Colin to become Col, and probably more common for Robert to become Bob or Rob than for Alan to become Al, and for Thomas to become Tom than for Malcolm to become Mal.

I always tell people that my name is Peter. But if they decide to call me Pete, that is fine with me. Most male Americans do this.

Andrew itself is a name of very considerable antiquity, going back ultimately to Ancient Greek Andreas and subsequently to Late Latin (which was the source of Spanish Andrés, Italian Andrea, German Andreas, and Scandinavian Anders), a personal name equivalent to andreios “manly, masculine, of or for a man; strong, stubborn”, from andros “man”.

We do not know when the English hypocoristic form Andy first appeared in print, but we would naturally expect it to have occurred in colloquial speech well before it appeared in writing. A graph published by the website Etymonline on the occurrence of Andy in publications indicates that it did not appear at all until the 1920s, but that it then increased dramatically in frequency by as much as 400% between the 1980s and the present day.

Andy Burnham will surely be the first prime minister to be called by that pet-name, although there are precedents for the prime ministerial usage of hypocorisms: Winston Churchill was often known as Winnie, and Blair was always Tony, not Anthony.

It would surely have been unthinkable for Sir Harold Macmillan, who was a real toff, to have been known as Harry. But Andy may work very well as the name of a socialist “man of the people”.