Baby Phonetics
Finally, we have to consider what may be called baby phonetics, the sound-changes which seem rather to transgress general phonetic laws. Young children habitually confuse dentals and palatals, thus a child may be heard to say that he has “dot a told.” This tendency is, however, not confined to children. My own name, which is a very uncommon one, is a stumbling-block to most people, and when I give it in a shop the scribe has generally got as far as Wheat- before he can be stopped.
We find both Estill and Askell for the medieval Asketil, and Thurtle alternating with Thurkle, originally Thurketil (Chapter VII). Bertenshave is found for Birkenshaw, birch wood, Bartley, sometimes from Bartholomew, is more often for Berkeley, and both Lord Bacon and Horace Walpole wrote Twitnam for Twickenham. Jeffcock, dim. of Geoffrey, becomes Jeffcott, while Glascock is for the local Glascott. Here the palatal takes the place of the dental, as in Brangwin for Anglo-Sax. Brandwine. Middleman is a dialect form of Michaelmas (Chapter IX). We have the same change in tiddlebat for stickleback, a word which exemplifies another point in baby phonetics, viz. the loss of initial s-, as in the classic instance tummy. To this loss of s- we owe Pick for Spick (Chapter XXIII), Pink for Spink, a dialect word for the chaffinch, and, I think, Tout for Stout. The name Stacey is found as Tacey in old Notts registers. On the other hand, an inorganic s- is sometimes prefixed, as in Sturgess for the older Turgis. For the loss of s- we may compare Shakespeare’s parmaceti (1 Henry IV. i. 3), and for its addition the adjective spruce, from Pruce, i.e. Prussia.
We also find the infantile confusion between th and f e.g. in Selfe, which appears to represent a personal name Seleth, probably from Anglo-Sax, saelth, bliss. Perhaps also in Fripp for Thripp, a variant of Thrupp, for Thorp. Bickerstaffe is the name of a place in Lancashire, of which the older form appears in Bickersteth, and the local name Throgmorton is spelt by Camden Frogmorton, just as Pepys invariably writes Queenhive for Queenhythe.
Such are some of the commoner phenomena to be noticed in connection with the spelling and sound of our names. The student must always bear in mind that our surnames date from a period when nearly the whole population was uneducated. Their modern forms depend on all sorts of circumstances, such as local dialect, time of adoption, successive fashions in pronunciation and the taste and fancy of the speller. They form part of our language, that is, of a living and ever-changing organism. Some of us are old enough to remember the confusion between initial v and w which prompted the judge’s question to Mr. Weller. The vulgar i for a, as in “tike the kike,” has been evolved within comparatively recent times, as well as the loss of final -g, “shootin and huntin,” in sporting circles. In the word warmint—
“What were you brought up to be?”
“A warmint, dear boy”
(Great Expectations, ch. xl.), we have three phonetic phenomena, all of which have influenced the form and sound of modern surnames, e.g. in Winter, sometimes for Vinter, i.e. vintner, Clark for Clerk, and Bryant for Bryan; and similar changes have been in progress all through the history of our language.
In conclusion it may be remarked that the personal and accidental element, which has so much to do with the development of surnames, releases this branch of philology to some extent from the iron rule of the phonetician. Of this the preceding pages give examples. The name, not being subject as other words are to a normalizing influence, is easily affected by the traditional or accidental spelling. Otherwise Fry would be pronounced Free. The o is short in Robin and long in Probyn, and yet the names are the same (Chapter VI). Sloper and Smoker mean a maker of slops and smocks respectively, and Smale is an archaic spelling of Small, the modern vowel being in each case lengthened by the retention of an archaic spelling. The late Professor Skeat rejects Bardsley’s identification of Waring with Old Fr. Garin or Warin, because the original vowel and the suffix are both different. But Mainwaring, which is undoubtedly from mesnil-Warin (Chapter XIV), shows Bardsley to be right.