What might Adolph be short for?

[Phoenix]

Or long?

Could a Dave be an Adolph, or is that stretching things?

[Olde Crone]

Adolph = Adolph, or maybe Adolphus.

A very very big stretch to Dave! (Dave Hitler...nope, doesn't work really, does it?)

OC

[Phoenix]

Lol!

It is really unfortunate that this is a Jewish family. Adolph died before WW2 but I can't find him arriving in the country or on any of the censuses. By the 1930s all the family are living together in South London - that is him, his wife and their children with spouses. But I can't take it backwards.

[Janet]

Is it the Adolph on this thread that you're looking for, Phoenix?
http://www.genealogistsforum.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=14436
I clicked forward 2 pages from that Ellis Island link for Adolph Berlinski and found an Arturo Fernandez where the "Arturo" is annotated with "Adolf" in parentheses. Thumbnail below. That probably only confuses matters even worse than before. Sorry!! Better than Dave, though? :d

Kite seemed to have found the actual Adolph Berlinski on that manifest, but I couldn't see him just now. I was looking on the Ellis Island website. Not sure where she was looking. Ah, never mind, here's the one Kite saw where he's a waiter:
http://search.ancestry.co.uk/iexec?htx=View&r=5538&dbid=7488&iid=NYT715_3164-0282&fn=Adolph&ln=Berlinski&st=r&ssrc=&pid=4026490522

But hold on, did you see this 24 Aug. 1922 manifest where A. Berlinski is listed under "Deserting Seamen", i.e., staying in New York and not returning to Southampton?
http://search.ancestry.co.uk/iexec?htx=View&r=5538&dbid=7488&iid=NYT715_3164-0206&fn=A&ln=Berlinski&st=r&ssrc=&pid=4026489496

[Kit]

Phoenix the stretch depends on the family. Adolph to Dave would not be so weird in Mum's family. We were going through her uncles or great uncles one day trying to match up the BMD index with what she called them. Most seemed to be called Uncle Jack and I thought I had the hang of it, so this is "that" Uncle Jack when she said 'no that is Uncle Mer'. :( Mer was actually relevant to the uncle's real name.

[Olde Crone]

Ah, Jewish, that makes a difference! He could very possibly be called David (Dave is an unlikely diminutive for a Hebrew, but not impossible, we have seen a DAVI/DALI in another family - that was short for Gedaliah!).

I'm sure you already know that Jewish men have two names, often three - one secular, one familial and one sacred name which would only really be used in synagogue and on important civil documents such as marriage, Wills etc. So your man could be Abraham (Holy name) known as Adolph by the general public and referred to as Dave on a daily basis by his family!

OC