From earlier -tjen, from Middle Dutch -kijn, from Old Dutch -kīn, which is the ancestor of the suffixes -ke, -ken, -tje (and its subvarieties: -je, -etje, -pje, -kje) and Afrikaans -tjie ([ci]). All forms descend from the Proto-West Germanic *-ikīn, *-ukīn, itself a double diminutive produced by combining Proto-West Germanic *-ik, *-uk + *-īn. The change from k to tj is the result of a palatalization of -kijn in North Holland in the 13th or 14th century.[1] Cf. also German -chen, English -kin.