Frankie

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A familiar nickname for a person whose full name is Francis or Frances, often used as a first name
2. A short, affectionate form of the given name Francis or Frances, used for both boys and girls
3. A diminutive first name derived from Frank, Francis or Frances, used as a personal name

Etymology: Frankie is a nickname for Francis, but the word also carries a second, unrelated sense: in some usage it is a synonym for "Frankenstein", the name used for a mad scientist or for the creature itself. That second sense owes its existence to a novel. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818, tells of Victor Frankenstein, who assembles a man from pieces of various corpses and brings him to life with electricity. The surname itself is German, formed from a place name and "Stein" ("stone"), where the first element refers to the Franks, the Germanic people after whom the Franconian region is named. Use of the name for the creature is a shortening of the earlier "Frankenstein's monster," and the monster's familiar look comes largely from Boris Karloff's performance in the 1931 film. The shortened form "frankie" follows this pattern of clipping a name into something more casual, so the everyday first name and the monster's nickname share a spelling but come from separate roots.