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Hello, a nurse at my local hospital is called Mimmy. I wouldn't have remembered her name if it hadn't have been on my mum's discharge papers. She is just "Mimmy", no surname is on the paper. She was a black British woman.
Anybody come across this (possible) nickname before?
Anybody come across this (possible) nickname before?
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Replies
Completely speculative, but I like it as a nickname for Mimosa! I looked "mim" up in the dictionary and apparently it's a British dialect word meaning "primly modest or demure." The word origin is fun, too -- it may be imitative of lip-pursing. So there's another random thought. Nickname for Miriam is probably a better guess.
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I'm thinking of an American author, Miriam Cohen, who wrote several stories about her childhood using her nickname, Mimmy. So in some cases Mimmy may be a diminutive of Miriam.
I had a neighbor named Miriam who went by Mimi, but in English I would not expect Mimmy to be pronounced like Mimi.
I had a neighbor named Miriam who went by Mimi, but in English I would not expect Mimmy to be pronounced like Mimi.
This message was edited 1/22/2020, 6:48 AM
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This.
Mim is a common nickname for Miriam and I can see it being turned into Mimmy.
Mim is a common nickname for Miriam and I can see it being turned into Mimmy.
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Mimi (with the same pronunciation) is used as a given name and nickname in Germany, and there is a well known song by Bill Ramsey 'Ohne Krimi geht die Mimi nie ins Bett'. It is a short form of something, but that something is given as Wilhelmine, Margarete, or Emilie here: https://www.beliebte-vornamen.de/9619-mimi.htm and I can imagine more names like Marie or Maria to be occasionally the source of Mimi.
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Perhaps it's a way of spelling Mimi that would help people not to pronounce it like My-My.
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Oh that's a good thought. It never occurred to me that Mimi could be pronounced my-my, but I'm coming from a place where I've seen it often enough in Japanese media to know the actual pronunciation of mee-mee. Mimmy sounds slightly different, but its closer to mee-mee than my-my.
That is, unless Mimi is pronounced slightly different and is from an entirely different source than the Japanese name. There's an unrelated English/Italian name with the same pronunciation and spelling, but it's entirely possible a similar name exists from another culture
That is, unless Mimi is pronounced slightly different and is from an entirely different source than the Japanese name. There's an unrelated English/Italian name with the same pronunciation and spelling, but it's entirely possible a similar name exists from another culture
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I was thinking English-Italian; specifically the soprano part in La Boheme where the character introduces herself: "They call me Mimi, but my nme is Lucia".
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