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Re: USAGE: name pronunciation

From:John Cowan <jcowan@...>
Date:Thursday, October 28, 2004, 13:42
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

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Roger Mills <rfmilly@...>