View Message

I'm sorry, but reading Rence immediately made me think of former White House Chief of Staff, Reince Priebus. (In his case, Reince is a nickname for Reinhold.) He's had the shortest tenure of any Chief of Staff in American history, as far as I know. And he's not a very popular guy.

---

The name Rance (pronounced like Lance but with an R) had some popularity in the U.S. in the 1800s, and BtN says it's likely derived from a Scottish surname. That's probably a better choice.

Rens is the Dutch version, so if I see Rence I think of that, since it's phonetically basically the same.

---

In the Nehterlands Larry / Laurie is not used that I know of. Rens is the common abbreviation for Laurens ad I once encountered Lau. So I guess it's just a matter of what happened to be used at some point and the general 'taste' of a the people. Lars is used as well, but mostly as a name on its own. I doubt very many people realize here Lars comes from Laurens as well.

Hah, Rence is so unexpected to my ear. In my American accent, the name Lawrence sounds like LOR-intz, with a lot of emphasis on the first syllable and the second almost elided, without a strong vowel sound. My guess is that it's just more intuitive to come up with a nickname from the emphasized syllable.

---

Lance was popular in the 60s-70s, but the one-syllable names that sound like Lance (like Vance and Chance) have never been as popular.

As a Dutchwoman, Rence feels like an anglicisation of Rens to me, which is interesting. That said, perhaps Rence never became a popular short form of Laurence, Lawrence and Terence because of its heavy similarity to pence, the plural of penny (the subunit of the pound sterling and Irish pound). And perhaps also to other English words, such as fence, hence and thence. People might then have thought that Larry and Laurie were better alternatives, because those are less easily associated with ordinary words.