[Kalimac]

Personally I always wondered about those old-fashioned abbreviations for given names; how DID "Jno." come to be an abbreviation for John, anyway? But that's another story.

Pippin's nickname isn't necessarily based on his given name the way, say, Sam's nickname is. Hobbits seem to fond of giving nicknames that relate to the subject's physical characteristics as much as to their given name - witness Fredegar (Fatty) Bolger, whose nickname has only one letter in common with his given name but which nonetheless sums him up pretty well. Merry is sort of the same way - true, it's a handy abbreviation of Meriadoc, but Tolkien mentions in the appendices somewhere that the nickname was also a jokey comment on his character.

So why Pippin? In ROTK, Bilbo describes Pippin as "little Pippin" which would imply that the pre-Ent-draught Pippin was a fairly small guy even for a hobbit; not to mention that he's the youngest of the four companions and may still have been young enough to grow a little more - in the ordinary way - when they left the Shire. Personally I'd suggest that the nickname comes from a fruit pippin, or pip, which is very tiny - or from "young pipsqueak", though I like the fruit pippin option myself [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]. Like Fatty, Pippin's nickname would have a letter or two in common with his given name, but its first purpose would be to describe him as being small and young.