would the person who called me lat have called gandhiji mo?
I have always been slightly uncomfortable in shortening names on Web forums. Some of the processes of picking a hyporcorism are interesting though. And, as Mr Shrdlu says mostly this is for benign and affectionate reasons, it can be for demeaning or insulting ones, too: e.g., Tricky Dick and Slick Willy for presidents Nixon and Clinton respectively. back to the actual formation processes: (1) shortening (the most common), from one or the other or both ends, or sometimes an initialism: e.g., Ed for Edward, Joe, Joseph (but sometimes with a mutated sound, as in Ned or Ted for Edward, Bob for Robert), Topher for Christopher, FDR, JFK; (2) then there are nicknames that have nothing to do with the form of the person's name, like Ginger for somebody with red hair, Nuncle for Zmjezhd (from another of my noms de ouaisbe, Uncle Jazzbeau). What to call people is a socially complex situation in most cultures, and I tend to not shorten a person's name because it's long or difficult to remember. Back to Mr Gandhi: we here in the States usually abbreviate Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi to Gandhi (or Mr Gandhi if writing for newspapers such as New York Times). I noticed in India that most refer to him as Gandhiji (the -ji being a title of repsect and not some lengthening of his name for hypocoristic purposes). Many refer to him as Mahatma Gandhi, thinking that Mahatma is his first name rather than another honorary title.
When visiting my friend's family in India, the adults mostly called me Jim, though on several occasions I was referred to by family members (in the third person with folks outside the family) as Mr Jim. The eldest brother was surprised when I gave him my business card to find out Jim is a nickname form of James and that I had a surname); the children all called me Jim Uncle, though one of the nephews, who's now in the States, asked for Uncle Jim once when my wife answered the phone (becoming culturally acclimated). As I am studying Japanese, I am amazed at how social niceties are handled in Japanese, grammatically (different verb forms) and lexically (different words depending on whether in relationship to the first person or to the second and third person). It is amazingly easy to insult somebody in Japanese.
