CHAPTER III

. SPELLING AND SOUND

"Do you spell it with a V or a W?" inquired the judge.

"That depends upon the taste and fancy of the speller, my lord," replied Sam. "I never had occasion to spell it more than once or twice in my life, but I spells it with a V."

(Pickwick, ch. xxxiv.)

Many people are particular about the spelling of their names. I am myself, although, as a student of philology, I ought to know better. The greatest of Englishmen was so careless in the matter as to sign himself Shakspe, a fact usually emphasized by Baconian when speaking of the illiterate clown of Stratford-on-Avon. Equally illiterate must have been the learned Dr. Crown, who, in the various books he published in the latter half of the seventeenth century, spelt his name, indifferently Cron, Croon, Croun, Crone, Croone, Croune. The modern spelling of any particular name Is a pure accident. Before the Elementary Education Act of 1870 a considerable proportion of English people did not spell their names at all. They trusted to the parson and the clerk, who did their best with unfamiliar names. Even now old people in rural districts may find half a dozen orthographic variants of their own names among the sparse documentary records of their lives. Dugdale the antiquary is said to have found more than 130 variants of Mainwaring among the parchments of that family. Bardsley quotes, under the name Blenkinsop--

"On April 2 3, 1470, Elizabeth Blynkkynesoppye, of Blynkkynsoppe, widow of Thomas Blynkyensope, of Blynkkensope, received a general pardon"--

four variants in one sentence. In the List of Foreign Protestants and Aliens in England (1618) we have Andrian Medlor and Ellin Medler his wife, Johan Cosen and Abraham Cozen, brethren. The death of Sarah Inward, daughter of Richard Inwood, was registered in 1685.

VARIANT SPELLINGS

Medieval spelling was roughly phonetic, i.e. it attempted to reproduce the sound of the period and region, and even men of learning, as late as the eighteenth century, were very uncertain in matters of orthography. The spelling of the language is now practically normalized, although in conformity with no sort of principle; but the family name, as a private possession, has kept its freedom. Thus, if we wish to speak poetically of a meadow, I suppose we should call it a lea, but the same word is represented by the family names Lea, Lee, Ley, Leigh, Legh, Legge, Lay, Lye, perhaps the largest group of local surnames we possess.

In matters of spelling we observe various tendencies. One is the retention of an archaic form, which does not necessarily affect pronunciation. Late Mid. English was fond of y for i, of double consonants, and of final -e. All these appear in the names Thynne (thin) and Wyllie (wily). Therefore we should not deride the man who writes himself Smythe. But in some cases the pronunciation suffers, e.g. the name Fry represents Mid. Eng. fri, one of the forms of the adjective that is now written free. Burt represents Anglo-Sax. beorht, the normal result of which is Bright. We now write subtle and perfect, artificial words, in the second of which the pronunciation has been changed in accordance with the restored spelling; but the older forms survive in the names Suttle and Parfitt--

"He was a verray parfit, gentil knyght."

(A, 72.)

The usual English pronunciation of names like Mackenzie, Menzies, Dalziel, is due to the substitution by the printer of a z for an obsolete letter that represented a soft palatal sound more like y. [Footnote: This substitution has led one writer on surnames, who apparently confuses bells with beans, to derive the rare surname Billiter, whence Billiter's Lane in the City, from "Belzetter, i.e., the Bell-setter." The Mid. Eng. "bellezeter, campanarius" (Prompt. Parv.), was a bell-founder, from a verb related to geysir, ingot, and Ger. giessen, to pour. Robert le bellegeter was a freeman of York in 1279.]

We have an archaic plural ending in Knollys (Knowles), the plural of knoll, and in Sandys, and an archaic spelling in Sclater for Slater or Slatter, for both slat and slate come from Old Fr. esclat (éclat), a splinter. With Knollys and Sandys we may put Pepys, for the existence of the dims. Pipkin, Peppitt, and Peppiatt points to the medieval name Pipun, corresponding to the royal Pepin. Streatfeild preserves variant spellings of street and field. In Gardiner we have the Old Northern French word which now, as a common noun, gardener, is assimilated to garden, the normal French form of which appears in Jardine.

Such orthographic variants as i and y, Simons, Symons, Ph and f, Jephcott, Jeffcott, s and c, Pearce, Pearce, Rees, Reece, Sellars (cellars), ks and x, Dickson, Dixon, are a matter of taste or accident. Initial letters which became mute often disappeared in spelling, e.g. Wray, a corner ( Chapter XIII ), has become hopelessly confused with Ray, a roe, Knott, from Cnut, i.e. Canute, or from dialect knot, a hillock, with Noll, crop-haired. Knowlson is the son of Nowell (