American Language Supplement 2 (90 page)

“Almost every discarded fashion of spelling,” says John Earle in “The Philology of the English Tongue,”
¹
“lives on somewhere in proper names.” The early scribes and notaries played hob with them, as Anders Orbeck shows for colonial America in his “Early New England Pronunciation,”
²
and many of the variants they propagated survive to this day,
e.g., Millar-Millard, Farrar-Farrow, Buckminster-Buckmaster
, and
Haywood-Hayward
. Miss Oursler, before quoted, reports that in the census returns for 1790
Kennedy
and
McLaughlin
were spelled in thirty-two different ways, and
Campbell
in twenty-seven.
Shakespeare’s
name, in his day, was spelled in eighty-three.
³
George
Washington’s
forefather, Laurence, was registered at Oxford as
Wasshington
in 1567;
Jefferson
was once
Jeffreson
and
Giffersonne; Adams
is interchangeable with
Addams, Adamson
and
Addamson; Jackson
, in its day, has been
Jakson, Jacson, Jackeson, Jakeson
and
Jaxon;
and
Lincoln
has gone through the forms of
Linccolne, Lyncoln, Lincon
and
Linkhorn
.
⁴
On Cape Cod
Mayo
and
Mayhew
are forms of the same name,
⁵
and so are
Harding
and
Hardin; Hamblen, Hamlin
and
Hamline; Merrick
and
Myrick; Shelley
and
Sherley; Crow
and
Crowell; Burge, Birge
and
Burgass
. Any American with an uncommon name is bound to find it grossly misspelled in his correspondence. The Hon. Thad
Eure
, formerly Secretary of State of North Carolina, was addressed by his constituents as
Ure, Euri, Ewar, Uue, Euria, Aure, Yuer, Erra, Eura
and
Eyre
,
⁶
and Wilberforce
Eames
, the bibliographer, cherished a collection of envelopes directed to
Anies, Bames, Earres, Gaines, Rames, Trames, Wames
, etc.
⁷

But it is in pronunciation rather than in spelling that surnames suffer their greatest mutations. As we have seen in Chapter VII, Section 1, the general tendency in American pronunciation is to throw the accents forward, so that
addréss
becomes
áddress
, but in surnames it is often reversed. Thus
Moran, Bernard, Costello, Waddell, Savile, Mahony, Maurice, Jacoby, Sinclair
and
Purcell
, all of which are accented on the first syllable in Britain, are usually accented on the second here.
¹
Another tendency is toward spelling-pronunciations, so that
Crowninshield
, which is
Crunchell
in England, is given the full value of all its syllables here, and
Harwood
is no longer
Harrod
, and
Heyward
is seldom
Howard
, and
Powell
is never
Po-ell
, and
St. John
is only rarely
Sin-jun
, and
Carew
is not
Carey
. But this tendency is not universal, and in the older parts of the country it meets with many checks. B. W. Green, in his “Word-Book of Virginia Folk Speech,”
²
lists a number of curious pronunciations in Tidewater Virginia,
e.g., Umsted
for
Armistead
,
³
Beard for Baird, Belfur
for
Balfour, Barnet
for
Bernard, Blunt
for
Blount
,
⁴
Bowthe
for
Boothe, Boler
for
Boulware, Brookenburro
for
Brockenbrough, Carroll
for
Callowhill, Kemp
for
Camp, Granger
for
Crenshaw, Druit
for
Drewry, Gouge
for
Gooch, Horton
for
Haughton
and
Hawthorne, Hickerson
for
Higginson, Munger
for
Ironmonger, Langon
for
Langhorne, Murray
for
Maury, Nazary
for
Norsworthy, Partrick
for
Patrick, Turnton
for
Turlington, Wait
for
Wyatt, Tolliver
for
Taliaferro
and
Darby
for
Enroughty
.

The last two have attracted much attention from students of names. The
Stammvater
of the American
Taliaferros
was Robert of that ilk, who was born in England about 1625 and came to Virginia some time before 1650, where he married, about 1653, Sarah Grymes, the daughter of the Rev. Charles Grymes of Brandon, a large landowner, and left a progeny that married into nearly all the prominent Virginia families of the time. Whether the surname was originally French or Italian is disputed. The French theory connects
it with a Norman knight named
Taillefer
, who came to England with William the Conqueror. The Italian theory, which was supported by Thomas Jefferson and Chancellor George Wythe, connects it with a Venetian musician named Bartolomeo
Taliaferro
, who immigrated to England in Elizabethan times. Whatever the fact, there are still plenty of
Tallifers, Telefers
and
Tollivers
in England, and the American family has produced many men of distinction,
e.g
., Major General William Booth
T
. (1822–98), of the Confederate Army; Benjamin and John
T
. (1750–1821 and 1768–1853), Virginia congressmen; James Piper
T
. (b. 1847), a Senator from Florida, and Dr. William H.
T
. (b. 1895), professor of parasitology at the University of Chicago and editor of the
Journal of Infectious Diseases
. Others have been successful lawyers, educators, bankers and business men, and no less than four are in “Who’s Who in America” for 1946–47. Two of the latter note that they pronounce the name
Tól-i-ver
. This change seems to go back to an early date in England, but the actress Mabel
Taliaferro
, born in New York in 1887, used
Tal-ya-fér-ro
. Whether
Taliaferro
was her family name or only a stage name I do not know.
¹

There are
Enroughtys
in Virginia who pronounce their name
En-ruff-ty
and others who pronounce it
Darby
. How this confusion arose has been thus described by F. W. Sydnor:

This disposes of the legend, current in Virginia, that the original
Darby
took the name of
Enroughty
on marrying into the family or on inheriting property from one of its members, but insisted on retaining his own name in society. Also, it reveals the falsity of the theory that the
Darby-Enroughtys
are really
Enroughtys
who pronounce the name
Darby
. They actually bear two names –
Enroughty
in writing and
Darby
in speech.
²

Lists of English surnames with strange pronunciations often appear in the newspapers,
e.g., Chumly
for
Cholmondelay, Looson-Gore
for
Levesson-Gower
, and
Marshbanks
for
Majoribanks
. Some other curious examples follow:
⁸