-zza

Meanings

1. Forms nicknames, especially of personal names.

Etymology

Originally Australian. From a mutation (specifically a zetacism) of the underlying rhotic consonant /ɹ/ to /z/ (see -z), combined with -a, a non-rhotic pronunciation spelling of -er (the Oxford colloquial clipping suffix). The template was popularized in print during the 1960s and 1970s by the Australian comedian Barry Humphries, whose satirical comic strip The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (first published in 1964 in the British magazine Private Eye) yielded the eponymous archetype Bazza, cementing the suffix in the Commonwealth lexicon.