Re: Phoneme winnowing continues

Christophe Grandsire scripsit:

> Well, be astonished then: it's not! (I did search for the etymology of my
> name, and "grandsire" has *never* been a word in Norman - maybe in
> Anglo-Norman, but not in Norman of the continent -, only a family name -
I am indeed, as my fellow anglophones of the island say, gobsmacked.

> which anyway has various orthographies. Besides "Grandsire" (and I know at
> least another "Grandsire" family completely unrelated to us), you find
> also "Grandsir", "Grandcir" and "Grancir".
This certainly doesn't surprise me.  The 18th-century novelist Henry Fielding
(a name of straightforward etymology: dweller in the field) was talking
with his distant relative the Earl of Denbigh about how the Earl's family
name came to be "Feilding" rather than "Fielding".  "I know not, my Lord,"
said Fielding, "unless it be that our branch of the family was the first
to learn how to spell."

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it has been said, then you are on a well-traveled     http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
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sure you are in hell, however, then you must be         jcowan@reutershealth.com
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