Diminutization

1987, Carolyn James, Paul Hogan: A Biography, New York: St. Martin’s Press, Glossary, pp. 211-212, No real Aussie can be safely left with the monicker he or she was first endowed with. Barry is Bazza; Charles is Chilla; John is Johnno; Shirley is Shirl; Bruce is Brucie […] ; Douglas is Duggie; and so on. If by chance a first name isn’t readily amenable to such diminutization, then the surname gets the treatment. Thus, Paul Hogan is always called Hoges in Australia.

A strain in Dickinson’s letters and some—though by far a minority—of her poems was a self-diminutization, almost as if to offset and deny—or even disguise—her actual dimensions as she must have experienced them. And this emphasis on her own “littleness,” along with the deliberate strangeness of her tactics of seclusion, have been, until recently, accepted as the prevailing character of the poet […]