Q: WHY is it that a woman named Margaret at birth goes through life being called Peggy? - Bill Rowley, Shildon.

A: PEGGY is connected with Maggie, the pet form of Margaret. Maggie is the shortened pet name that you would expect to derive from Margaret, but at one time Maggie was a name in its own right. The r before the consonant was often dropped in the name Margaret in the Middle Ages and the name Maggie developed as a separate name in this period. In Scotland, Maggie became especially common, where adding the suffix ie was often added to the end of a pet name, in this case Mag. There was even a Gaelic variation on the name Maggie which was spelled Magaidh.

In times gone by there was another variation on Maggie in which the a was subsititued with an e. It is from this name, Meggie, now an obsolete pet form of Margaret, that Peggy or Peggie is thought to derive.

The same thing happens with the names Polly and Molly. Molly is an Irish pet form of Mary and Polly is an English pet form of Molly. Both Polly and Molly became names in their own right.

It is interesting that the names Meg and Megan were variations on the name Margaret which developed respectively in Scotland and Wales, so it is possible that Peggie was simply a way of giving the pet forms of Margaret an English identity. Interestingly, I understand that the obsolete pet name Meggie is still used in Australia for people called Megan.

The name Margaret derives from the Old French Marguerite and can be traced back to the Latin name Margarita and the Greek name Margarites. It derives ultimately from the Hebrew word Margaron meaning pearl.

Many variations and pet forms of the name Margaret have developed and include Margot, Greta, Rita, Marge, Margie, Peg and, perhaps most surprisingly, Daisy. This was a pun on the name Marguerite that developed in England due to the similarity of the marguerite flower to a daisy.

A: CONCERNING a recent Burning Question regarding Carling Sunday and Mother's Day. We were told that Carling Sunday was known by that name through a ship docking at Hartlepool loaded with carlings (peas). There was a famine in the area at the time and the carlings were used to feed the people.

Pubs used to serve carlings. It was said that the landlords always put plenty of salt in to make the customers thirsty. We used to have names for all the Sundays in Lent. They are Tid, Mid, Miseray, Carling, Palm Sunday, Paste Egg Day. Girls used to skip to the rhyme. - Ray Gibson, Evenwood.

A: FURTHER to your reply in Burning Questions of March 12, Mothering Sunday is also called by this name from the epistle of the day in the Book of Common Prayer, which refers to Jerusalem as the mother of us all. I have also been led to believe that Carling Sunday received its name because a ship load of carlings was wrecked off the North- East coast on this day, at the time of a famine. - Peter Elliott, Darlington.

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DL1 1NF

Published: Monday, March 26, 2001