Re: USAGE: name pronunciation

Joe scripsit:

> >How do you pronounce the name "Gerry" - with a /g/ or with a /dZ/?
>
> [dZ].  It's a shortened from of 'Gerald', indeed, as opposed to 'Jerry',
> which is short for 'Jeremy'.
Not always: Jerrys in both Left- and Rightpondia are sometimes Gerald.
A notable British example would be the 17th Duke of Denver, Gerald
("Jerry", "Pickled Gherkins") Wimsey.  It's essentially the same story
as Jeff for Geoffrey, which latter is sometimes Jeffrey or Jeffry.

Even the surname "Gerry", historically pronounced with a [g], is now
often made [dZ] even by those who bear it*, and the American political
verb "gerrymander", meaning "to divide an area into districts in such
a way as to advantage one group over another" is most often pronounced
[dZ], although the first part of it memorializes Eldridge Gerry [g],
the governor of Massachusetts, who redrew the boundaries of election
districts in 1812 so as to benefit his party.  One of them looked
something like a salamander, and was christened the "Gerry-mander"
by a newspaper editor in captioning an editorial cartoon (see
http://memory.loc.gov/rbc/rbpe/rbpe00/rbpe000/00000100/001dq.gif).

===

[*] But the Enroughtys [da:biz] and the Taliaferros [tAl@v3z] will
    *never* submit to mere spelling pronunciations!

--
"Clear?  Huh!  Why a four-year-old child        John Cowan
could understand this report.  Run out          jcowan@reutershealth.com
and find me a four-year-old child.  I           http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
can't make head or tail out of it."             http://www.reutershealth.com
        --Rufus T. Firefly on government reports

Reply