Occasionally I have come across a reference to the devil as Old Nick. Why would we call him that? This post is my attempt to answer the question.
For anyone interested in the many many names of the devil and his minions, I would recommend the study “The Devil and his Imps: an Etymological Inquisition” by Charles P. G. Scott1. Published in 1895, it gives an incredibly thorough account of the various names that the devil has gone by over time. This blog post takes heavily from his research as it gives such a thorough view on the history of names for the devil.
In the article, Scott mentions that the devil may be referred to as Nick, often with the prefix of Old (or Owd). In cases where Nick is seen as “the Old Gentleman,” he may also be referred to as Mr. Nick. Interestingly, he states that this name was one of the inspirations for starting the project altogether.
The earliest reference to Nick as the devil he found was dated to 1695, and Old Nick was 1678. Interestingly, it seems that many people over the years have tried to attribute the etymology of Old Nick; the earliest the article cites is the writings of Sir William Temple in 1699. Temple and many others describe Nick as being derived from the Anglo-Saxon “nicor”, or the Icelandic/Swedish/Danish equivalent “nykr”, referring to a water spirit.
Scott refutes this. He states that if Nick came from the Saxon nicor or the Icelandic nykr, the termination “-or” or “-r” would not have fallen off. He also points our that historically the nicor (or niker) has no connection to the term Nick. He proposes that the connection between the creature and Nick comes from the more modern Scandinavian forms- in Swedish “neck” and in Danish “nök”.
It seems that this connection may have stemmed from the 1699 work of Temple. Scott could find no other mentions of the connection until this appeared in a dictionary in 17412:
Necken, s. Old neck, the god of the sea, Neptunus.
1741 Serenius, Dictionarium Suethico-anglo-latinum, p. 146.
From this point numerous references to the connection are made. Fast forward to 1830, and Sir Walter Scott adds to the lore of Old nick by describing him as:
a “genuine descendant of the northern sea god,” a special terror to “the British sailor, who fears nothing else”
Incidentally, Scott was able to find no mention of this connection in the Scandinavian literature- it is solely an English-language based connection. He also mentions that the connection also logically does not make sense. The devil is generally associated with fire, not water. In the Bible, it is said “he walketh through dry places, seeking rest-and findeth none.”
So, where else could Old Nick have come from? Scott suggests a simpler explanation- that it has come from the English name Nick, or Nicholas. Whereby Nicol was once the short version of the name Nicholas, historically the devil could be referred to as Nicol. This adds legitimacy to the theory. He also suggests that Nick could be derived from Hick, as Ned once was from Ed. Incidentally he puts Old Nick in the same category as other household Christian names for the devil, which includes “Dick, Dickens, Hob, Robin, Jack with the lantern, Will with the wisp”.
On the application of these more casual names to the devil, Scott has to say3:
In considering the application of the name Nick thus derived, and of other familiar personal names, to the Devil, we are not to think of that personage as the black malignant theological spirit of evil, but rather as a goblin of limited powers, a “poor” devil, who may be half daunted, half placated, by a little friendly impudence or homely familiarity.
Some other attempts at interpreting the name Old Nick as coming from Nicholas say that it is somehow tied to Saint Nicholas. Scott does not believe that there is a connection here; Old Nick simply stems from applying a familiar name to the devil. This ascertion is repeated by Maximillian Rudwin in his tome on the devil in legend and literature4.
Rudwin does however speak more to the connection between Old Nick and Saint Nicholas. He points out that Saint Nicholas has become something of a bogeyman to children. Whilst he is still the saint that brings gifts to children, he is also the punisher of naughty children with sticks or coal5. He proposes that perhaps over the years, Old Nick and Santa Claus have become the same being. Professor Godbey suggests that during the Puritanical denunciation of Christmas festivities as pagan, there was an effort to enrol Santa Claus into the list of demons of hell (with not much success)6.
In modern times, the name has largely fallen out of fashion. References to the devil as Old Nick appear to largely be historical. In general, the exact history of the term appears to have been lost to time. Even Oxford University is forced to state that “it’s origins are uncertain” in their definition (though they do also mention the link to German/Scandinavian folklore creatures beginning with nik-)7.
References
- The Devil and his Imps: an Etymological Inquisition by Charles P. G. Scott https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2935696.pdf ↩︎
- Ibid ↩︎
- Ibid ↩︎
- The Devil in Legend and Literature by Maximillian Rudwin https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.286153/page/n13/mode/2up ↩︎
- Ibid ↩︎
- Ibid ↩︎
- Oxford Reference: Old Nick https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100248400 ↩︎