Tess

[HeratthePC]

What is Tess, as in Tess of the Durbervilles, short for?

[Glossopswift]

I'm pretty sure that it isn't short for anything, or if it is then it isn't mentioned. I have known a couple of Tesses in my time and they were both short for Teresa, but I don't think Hardy specifies. Of course, I'm bound to get shot down in flames by the next person....

[ursula62]

Tess is also a name in it's own right...

A Greek name, meaning fourth born.

http://baby-names.adoption.com/search/Tess.html

Or Latin, meaning Reaper

http://www.bubbaboo.com/meaning-of-baby-names.asp?n=Tess

[sanfran]

It could also be short for Tessa - and I think at some point in the book she is called Theresa d'Urberville - by Alec or Angel I can't remember.

[THECORBYLOON]

Maybe she didn't have long legs......

[Glossopswift]

I left myself open in my first answer, and I can only thank Sanfran for holding back from shooting me down. She or he is quite right, it was Angel Clare : I quote from chapter 55:

Clare received directions how to find the house, and hastened thither, arriving with the milkman. The Herons, though an ordinary villa, stood in its own grounds, and was certainly the last place in which one would have expected to find lodgings, so private was its appearance. If poor Tess was a servant here, as he feared, she would go to the back-door to that milkman, and he was inclined to go thither also. However, in his doubts he turned to the front, and rang.
The hour being early the landlady herself opened the door. Clare inquired for Teresa d'Urberville or Durbeyfield.
"Mrs d'Urberville?"
"Yes."

[Peter Pedant]

 

I think she was calling herself Teresa at that time because she was acting up posh.

The film, roman Polanski, with Natasia Kinska starring catches, to my mind, the milieu and is worth a look. The backgrounds are very good especially the change in agrarian practices as the film winds through the nineteenth century

[Weaza_cfc]

Theresa.