This is a great question, and for a while I always wondered whether it was an actual nickname, but I think (and i'm pretty sure) that Phillipa Gregory did make that nickname up for her and was popularized within her fan base. But 'Kitty' is a pretty popular nickname for the name Katherine – I've heard friends refer to their other friends named Katherine as 'Kitty' and i've actually seen it on TV shows so maybe PG wanted to show the familarality between the characters like if you had a friend named Sam and your nickname for them was 'Sammy'. (?)

But who knows? Maybe Katheryn's nickname was 'Kitty'? I know that Henry had a nickname for KOA which was 'Kate'.

I find it massively annoying, personally. Not just because there is no historical evidence of it, not just because it was made up by PG (although that IS annoying, in and of itself), but because it just seems so… rude and presumptuous. I'd feel the same if someone continuously referred to Anne Boleyn as, say, Anna Banana. Or Queen Victoria as Tricky Vicky. And then (horrors), everybody online picked up those nicknames and never referred to them any other way. JMO, of course.

I have a terrible habit of referring to Katherine Howard as Kitty. I've read it in a couple of books, im sure. I think it's used in Darcey Bonnetes Secrets of the Tudor Court

Claire-Louise said:

I think it’s used in Darcey Bonnetes Secrets of the Tudor Court

I don't think I've heard of this one. Is it newer or older, fiction or non-fiction?

Mistress Anne,

I don't like 'Nan' for Anne either, it bugs me for some reason. Like in 'Anne of a thousand days' Henry called Anne 'Nan' and it bothered me because I think Anne is such a pretty name and 'Nan' kind of sounds like a name for a bird.

Anyanka,

I like your spelling for Katheryn too and it makes the name look unique and pretty. I also like that you named her in honor of Katheryn, I was actually planning on doing that whenever I have kids. For a daughter I liked Rosalie Anne and it works because my mother's middle name is Ann and my idol is named Anne so it's a win win.

Thanks, Claire-Louise!

Personally, I despise the nickname “Kitty”; it’s certainly not from the 16th Century (I believe it first became popular in the 18th/19th Century? I vaguely recall books of those eras using it – but never for KH.) It’s an invention of PG and that, in itself, makes it annoying, and actually, rather insulting. It always seemed really demeaning in my view – Katherine’s reputation suffers at her being regarded as a ‘stupid teenager’ so much already, that calling her something as peppy, cute and uncontemporary as “Kitty” just rubs salt in the wound.

That being said, I’m not totally innocent of giving the wives nicknames. I tend to call Catherine (of Aragon) “Gatty” and Anne Boleyn “Nan” or “Nana”, but I keep that to personal usage – I don’t ever include them in writings of them. To do so, as PG does with “Kitty”, seems rather presumptious, unprofessional, and annoying.

I really dislike “Kitty” as well. It just contributes to making her sound more immature and irresponsible than she really was. I spell both her and Katherine of Aragon the same way, as I do with Anne Boleyn and Anne of Cleves. I don’t have a problem with it because I always write all of their names out in full anyway, although I sometimes refer to Anne of Cleves as her actual name, “Anna von Kleve” when I talk to other German speakers.
By the way, I’m also averse to “Nan Bullen”, I believe I once read somewhere that some people would refer to her as such because it made her sound like the commoner she used to be rather than a (future) queen.

The issue with Kitty is that there is absolutely no historical record of Katherine Howard (or any other Katherine for that matter) ever being called such. I do not even think, though I could be wrong, that Kitty was used at all in the 16th century. I believe it emerged in the Regency era, or at least around then. There is no evidence to say that she was definitely not called it, since there is little evidence at all of her early years that wasn’t dragged up in the interrogations years later, but Kitty doesn’t appear in any historical record at all, as far as I am aware, until centuries later. So the likelihood of Katherine being given a nickname is more probably ‘Kat’, or ‘Kate’, or other variants thereof. We know that she was given the sobriquets of ‘the jewel of womanhood’ and ‘the rose without a thorn’, but never anything like Kat/Kitty.

Sobriquets and epithets are generally endearing, yes, although there are numerous cases of them not being so: Bloody Mary, Concubine and Night Crow to contrast Gloriana and Prince Hal, for example. My issue with Kitty being demeaning is not that it’s a generally derogatory name, but that it’s unfitting to give to Katherine years down the line, in any professional writing. It’s simply inappropriate. The other issue is that it does sound very childlike, and whilst that isn’t necessarily bad, generally, with Katherine, whose been written off in history as a ‘stupid little girl’, it just seems rather detrimental because it contributes to the same misconception that Katherine was a young idiot.