Anyone who has spent any length of time in Stoke-on-Trent will be familiar with the classic Stokie greeting of ‘ayup m’duck’.

The term has become synonymous with the city and the Potteries dialect many speak.

With duck designs being printed on mugs and tea towels, it seems an odd choice for a term of endearment.

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There are several possible explanations for the origin of this term.

Some have suggested that the term originates from the Latin ‘ductus’ meaning ‘leadership’, which, via French, is also where we get ‘duke’.

Under this theory ‘duck’ could originate as a term of respect, a bit like a cockney calling someone ‘guv’nor’.

However, the more likely answer is actually far simpler.

The word ‘duck’ as a term of endearment is not from a Latin or French root, but does actually refer to the bird.

Bottom uses 'duck' as an affectionate term in Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'

According to this theory, the word is first seen in Old English or Anglo-Saxon, which was spoken in Britain up until the Norman Conquest in 1066 and is almost completely unintelligible to modern English speakers.

‘Duck’ in this context originates as what is called a ‘hypercoristic’ term.

This is where you apply the name of a domestic or endearing animal to a human as a term of affection.

Another example of this would be calling a child a ‘cheeky monkey’.

The similarity to ‘ductus’ or ‘duk’ appears to be coincidental, though the term was used in Middle English to refer to a ‘duc’ or ‘duk’ as a leader or powerful person.

At the beginning of the Knight’s Tale in the Canterbury Tales Geoffrey Chaucer writes: “Ther was a duc that highte Theseus” (‘There was a duke that was called Theseus’).

The opening lines of The Canterbury Tales, written in Middle English

However, this use of ‘duc’ in Middle English is distinct from the word ‘duck’ as a term of endearment, as the two uses come from different linguistic roots.

In Middle English, the distinction is clearer, with ‘doke’ (pronounced ‘dow-keh’) being the most common form of duck the animal.

One use of ‘duck’ as a term of endearment is actually by Shakespeare in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1600), when Bottom says “O dainty duck, o deare!” in his role as the lover Pyramus.

It's unclear exactly how common the word was as a term of endearment in Middle English, but its use by Shakespeare could suggest that it had previously been used in this way.

The dialect of Middle English around Staffordshire also retained more of Old English than that spoken down south and chronicled by Chaucer. That tended to incorporate more French.

Given the word's origin in Old English, it’s possible that this retention of older Anglo-Saxon terms is what has preserved ‘duck’ as a term of endearment in this part of Britain.

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