---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Margaret Usmar <margaretusmar@gmail.com> Date: May 6, 2007 7:14 PM Subject: Hetty To: jamesventor@hotmail.co.uk Hello Ann Hetty is a diminutive, rather than a nickname - usually short for Henrietta. That doesn't explain why Polly is the accepted diminutive for Mary, but there you go. One of my great-aunts was always Auntie Vi to all of us - even my mother's siblings didn't know, until I found her as a toddler on the 1901 census, that her name was actually Frances Emmeline Violet. Right down to my generation I have cousins who aren't called what the rest of us thought they were! Regards Margaret