Apparently [name]Blair[/name] was used in the Victorian era as a nickname for [name]Elizabeth[/name]. Similarly to how [name]Sadie[/name] was used for a nickname for [name]Sarah[/name]. [name]How[/name] does that work?? :eek:
I don’t know, either. I’m a [name]Sarah[/name] and have never had anyone even guess that my nn was [name]Sadie[/name]! I was surprised when I heard that. I didn’t know that about [name]Blair[/name] being a nn for [name]Elizabeth[/name], either…
Well, according to the wikipedia entry for [name]Elizabeth[/name], [name]Blair[/name] is the Scottish nickname taken from the last part of [name]Elizabeth[/name]. So I guess it somehow developed from [name]Beth[/name]? shrug That’s the only thing I could turn up in my five minutes of google research.
[name]Blair[/name] is originally a masculine name and is from a Scottish last name, which is derived from the Gaelic blar, meaning plain, field, battlefield. It has no connection to [name]Elizabeth[/name]. The closest [name]Blair[/name] form from [name]Elizabeth[/name] is Beileag, which isn’t pronounced [name]Blair[/name]!
I am not a fan of [name]Blair[/name] whether it is a legitimate nickname for [name]Elizabeth[/name] or not.
Wikipedia says it is. Elizabeth (given name) - Wikipedia
Scroll down to the Name Variants section- and the last part of the name. It says [name]Blair[/name] is a Scottish variation of the last part of [name]Elizabeth[/name].
But on official name sites, they all said the name was of Gaelic/Scottish origin and didn’t mention anything about it being a nickname for [name]Elizabeth[/name]:
Thirteen year old trolls vs. Legit baby name sites.
Well, considering people get [name]Bobby[/name] from [name]Robert[/name], [name]Sadie[/name] from [name]Sarah[/name] and [name]Billy[/name] from [name]William[/name], I guess you can use [name]Blair[/name] for [name]Elizabeth[/name].
I always find that a really difficult part of naming- there are no peer-reviewed sources on naming, so you just have to do the best you can with what you’ve got. I don’t even know where to look for solid information; Behind the Name is usually very accurate, but there isn’t much detail and the database of names is pretty small, and Nameberry is very thin on etymological information. Most of the other sites I find very unreliable.
I read in a textbook once that at one point in [name]England[/name], 1/3 of the female population was named [name]Mary[/name], [name]Elizabeth[/name], or [name]Margaret[/name], so variations and nicknames abounded. People ended up really creative, hence stretches like [name]Molly[/name], [name]Betsy[/name], and [name]Peg[/name]. Maybe [name]Blair[/name] snuck in there at some point.
With regards to [name]Sadie[/name] from [name]Sarah[/name]…
[name]Sally[/name]/[name]Sallie[/name] are from [name]Sarah[/name], most likely inspired by the name [name]Malle[/name]/[name]Mally[/name] from [name]Mary[/name].
It’s not uncommon for these old English nicknames to have a letter or two changed in them, to create new nicknames, i.e. [name]Malle[/name]/[name]Mally[/name] became [name]Molly[/name], and [name]Molly[/name] became [name]Polly[/name].
Thus it’s possible that [name]Sadie[/name] is simply a result of being creative, and switching the ‘ll’ in [name]Sally[/name]/[name]Sallie[/name] to a ‘d’, to create a new nickname for [name]Sarah[/name].
However, another possibility (and the one I think may be more likely), is it was inspired by the name [name]Maidie[/name], which is an old English name meaning ‘maiden’.