Argh Question

~ Jenny

For once, something Google can’t answer.

What is the nickname “Dillie” short for?

Yes, I know I named her that, but it was a long time ago. The only thing that comes to mind is Tom Bombadil and just no on that. Dylan is a possibility, but that would make her Dylie, wouldn’t it?

This is going to drive me nuts.

71 thoughts on “Argh Question”

  4. Maybe a name that has a “dill” in the back half. Cordelia isn’t spelled right, but something like it?

    It’s also possible that the place you got it from spelled it wrong. My mom thought she was using an Irish spelling for my sister’s middle name because she trusted the baby book she got it from. Turns out, it is an Irish spelling. For a different name.

  5. Just give her 3 long names that spell the initials DIL or maybe she liked pickles when she was little

  7. Nicknames don’t have to make sense. Think about Beverly Cleary’s Beezus or Midge and Peggy for Margaret.

  10. Dahlia, Delia etc.

    Knowing you it could probably a link to Dill from “To Kill A Mockingbird” who was the “outsider.”

  12. Didn’t Dairy Queen have an ice cream bar called a Dilly Bar? Maybe she had a spectacularly messy encounter with one as a toddler and they started to call her that then. Also, dilly is sometimes used as a synonym for doozie, as in, “That last question was really a dilly!” They could have chosen ie as the more feminine spelling.

    1. Recalling the Tucker Family attitude r.e. desserts and Dillie’s reaction to Dove Bars, I find this possible but unlikely. Also unlikely, the possibility of a DQ in Temptation, OH.

      1. But there is a DQ in Temptation! Rachel tells Leo that she will take him to dinner and he can tell her what the movie needs, and he says he won’t talk dirty to her in a restaurant, so she says they will get Dairy Queen and eat it in the car

          1. It’s all good! I wouldn’t have remembered either but I just finished my billionth reread of WTT yesterday so its still fresh in there! 🙂

          1. Diane would have had to move fast, but that would be in character, for her to name the baby as soon as the kid emerged from the birth canal. Once the mother registered it, the grandmother couldn’t change it. And I think Phin would have back Diane on naming her own daughter.

  13. I’ve been googling and keep getting that it’s short for Dylan, which makes sense. Dylan Tucker sounds right.

  19. Or it could be she likes Dilly bars. I work with a person whose name is John but he is known as Guy. His brother used to introduce him as the little guy. I didn’t know that wasn’t his actual name for 10 years.

    Delphina?

  22. Just for you, I went upstairs for my Oxford Dictionary of First Names, which says:

    Dilly (f.) English: pet form of Dilys, Dilwen, and Daffodil, now sometimes used as an independent given name.
    (Dilys is Welsh, and means genuine, steadfast, true. Dilwen adds (g)wyn to Dilys, meaning white, fair, blessed, holy.)

    But a lot of other suggestions here are good, too.

  23. I really like all the Welsh names and information above, but I also think Delia would fit nicely. Given that her mom was young and flighty, it wouldn’t have to be a traditional name; it could have been just about anything.

    2. Also an early Quaker name, sometimes still used for a girl named after a grandmother or similar.

      Anyway, a “virtue” name.

  28. OMG I just went through this whole process recently, I was obsessed! After rereading Welcome to Temptation I fell in love with Dillie’s character all over again. We are getting a new puppy & I want to use the name and had to sell it to the fam, they hadn’t heard it before. Google threw up all the other previous comments. It’s a great name, thank you!

  30. Sorry can’t help. Dillie is one of my favourite characters, and I’m now rereading Welcome to Temptation rather than sleeping. Thank you Jenny. (g)

  31. I was thinking I remembered another heroine called Dilly, and I had to search out the title, but it’s Daisy Newman’s THE AUTUMN’S BRIGHTNESS.

    [She has another book titled DILIGENCE IN LOVE, but that isn’t the name of the heroine.]

    1. And now, tangential to Piccadilly, I’m whistling ‘My Old Man Said, “Follow the Van” and don’t dilly-dally on the way! Off went the van with my old man in it, I followed on with my old cock linnet. I dillied, I dallied, dallied and I dillied, lost my way and don’t know where to go . . . And I can’t find my way home!’

  34. Well, this is fantastic.

    It would have been Dilly’s mom who named her, or possibly Phin or Liz. I kind of like the idea that she would call her Delilah, since I’m sure Liz threw that one at her. If her mom Junie had named the baby, I could see Daffodil. I can’t make Dylan or any of the other names work with the characters who would have been arguing over the helpless infant, but I like the idea that Dilly’s mother might have registered her name before Liz or Phin could have.
    Delilah June Tucker.
    I can’t remember what her mother’s name was, which is sad, but I could see her co-opting Liz’s insult and giving her own mother the middle name as an up-yours to Liz.
    Plus Delilah is such a pretty name. And then there’s the Samson story to riff on.
    No, I’m not writing a story about Dillie grown up. Although she would be in her late twenties in 2021. She was what, eight? in 2000.
    Now I have to go look that up.

    1. Mom’s name was Diane.
      Dillie was nine, so she’d be twenty-nine now.

      How time flies . . .

  35. Totally off the wall, but remember “daffy-down-dilly” from CLOUDS OF WITNESS?

    I wondered about that for years, but finally the word turned up — it was an 18th-century insult and meant a lawyer who used someone else’s case to personally profit.

      1. CORRECTION — WOOPS

        It is a shrub, but a use so obscure that I wonder how Dorothy Sayers ever came across it is as a criminal libel. It’s not CLOUDS OF WITNESS, it’s UNNATURAL DEATH, but here’s the quote:

        ‘You are too easily surprised,’ said Mr Towkington. ‘Many words have no legal meaning. Others have a legal meaning very unlike their ordinary meaning. For example, the word “daffy-down-dilly”. It is a criminal libel to call a lawyer a daffy-down-dilly. Ha! Yes, I advise you never to do such a thing. No, I certainly advise you never to do it.’

        If a Man ſays of a Counſellor of Law in the North, Thou art (g) a Daffa-down-dilly an Action lies, with an Averment that the words ſignifie that he is an (h) Ambodexter. Mich. 10 Car. B. R. in (i) Peare’s Caſe, ſaid to have been adjudged in Scaccario, and agreed per Curiam.

        This meaning of ‘ambidexter’ is in the OED:

        ambidexter, n. and adj. 2. Law. A corrupt lawyer (or occasionally juror) who takes fees or bribes from both sides in a case.

        https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/12554/what-is-the-libellous-meaning-of-daffy-down-dilly

  36. I was sure that I remembered a madrigal with a “hey, dilly, dilly” chorus until I realized that what I was remembering was the “Hey ding a ding a ding! Sweet lovers love the Spring” from “It was a Lover and his Lass”. Sigh. I liked the idea of naming a baby after a celebration of springtime and love.

  38. I remember at the time looking up names with Dilly as a possible nickname and coming up with Cordelia as the most likely. I guess I’ve really internalized that because I now feel quite strongly that her name is Cordelia. 🙂

  40. Idalie. I say this with great confidence because I had an Auntie Dill, and that’s what it was short for. Stress on the first syllable.

  41. Many excellent suggestions above.

    I kinda thought Dillon, after Matt, because Diane would do that.

  42. How about Bedilia, short form Dil/Dillie? It’s Irish and means ‘strength or exalted one.’ 🙂

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