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From: Janis Walker Gilmore <>
Subject: Re: [TGF] phonetics of names (was re: BCG Standard #24 - an aside)
Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:04:25 -0500
In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20100307183656.053be0a0@seanet.com>


Ida,

A subject of some of my recent research, Archalus Walker, turns up variously
as Archibald, Archalaus, Archaleous, Archilious, etc. The most puzzling to
me was that he seemed to be the same person as an "Achilles" Walker -- until
I learned, quite by accident, that there is an Achilles, Kansas --
pronounced "ACH-uh-lus." Very like Archalus, especially when spoken in rural
Middle Tennessee in the very early 1800's.

Janis Walker Gilmore
Pawleys Island, SC, & Seattle, WA

On 3/11/10 3:38 PM, "Ida Skarson McCormick" <> wrote:

> Larry:
>
> For me, problem solving with the phonetics of given names, nicknames,
> and surnames is part of methodology. I have been lecturing on this
> for years now, but I find few others who do so. Roger P. Minert on
> German names comes to mind. There seems to be little or no attention
> paid to phonetics of names at large conferences.
>
> Looking at nicknames through "modern filters" is a good example of a
> gap in understanding. Eli was not a nickname for Elijah, Elisha,
> Elishama, Eliphelet, or any other Bible name beginning with Eli-. Dan
> was not a nickname for Daniel. The rule of thumb is that different
> people in the Bible are different people in genealogy.
>
> Many nickname lists in print and online include "modern" nicknames
> without differentiating them and seriously degrade the value of such
> lists. Some 20th Century common nicknames have been "stolen" from
> older etymologically unrelated names.
>
> (This e-mail is using the word "nickname" in the current popular sense.)
>
> --Ida Skarson McCormick, , Seattle
>
>
> At 04:52 PM 3/7/2010, Larry Boswell wrote:
>> That's a whole area of genealogy that could be researched, given the
>> importance of understanding phonetic presentations of words and names.
>>
>> that's reaching a bit away from this data-datum, but in a way as more words
>> and languages are cast aside, there is a gap in understanding the full
>> meaning of less commonly used words. Datum was a specific set of meanings,
>> possibly not all of them may have been caught up in extending data to cover
>> the singular case.
>>
>> Maybe at some point we'll have a sub-field within genealogy specificially
>> addressing questions of a purely linquistic nature, with a focus on older
>> dialects and languages. Without that we're looking at many period pieces of
>> writing purely through modern filters. We tend to think of theory in very
>> limited ways, yet as we become more sophisticated as a field, methodology
>> (as in 'study of methods') alone won't be enough. <snip>
>
>
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