Due to people having to write everything by hand, shortened versions of Richard were common, such as ‘Ric’ or ‘Rich’. 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. Because of that, ‘dick’ meaning ‘penis’ probably had been around a while before the 1890s, but not nearly long enough before to have contributed to the Richard/Dick connection. Exactly how that latter meaning came about isn’t known, being a slang term that was considered somewhat uncouth to put on paper. ![]() However, the first record of ‘dick’ meaning ‘jerk’ didn’t come about until a few hundred years after its association with Richard and the first record of it referring to a penis wasn’t until the 1890s, as a British army slang term. You might think from Richard meaning “hard ruler” and being a man’s name that Dick being a nickname for Richard probably came about for pejorative reasons, borrowing from one of the other meanings of “dick”, such as ‘dick’ as in ‘jerk’ or ‘dick as in ‘penis’. ![]() ![]() This was adopted into Old High German as ‘Ricohard’, and from there to Old French, then Old English as ‘Richeard’, and today as ‘Richard’. The name Richard is thought by most etymologists to derive from the Proto-Germanic ‘Rikharthu’, meaning more or less “hard ruler” (‘Rik-‘ meaning ‘ruler’ and ‘-harthu’ meaning ‘hard’). Today I found out why Dick is short for Richard.
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