Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Upcoming Reprise

Monday, April 16th.
The Most Marvelous Summer

Double ff and hyphenation, clergyman's daughter, mumps!

6 comments:

  1. Most marvellous! I'm looking forward to next week!
    Betty Magdalen, while I'm writing this somebody in Amersfoort,NL is visiting this site. (My train stopped in Amersfoort.)

    Fox vs ffinch. Ha! We know who we are rooting for.
    Betty Anonymous

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  2. This is probably a stupid question, but you know the old saying about how the only stupid question is the one you don't ask. Why is it ffinch instead of Ffinch? The first time I came across ffinch I thought it was a typo. Is there some grammatical, historical, British, ... reason? Just curious.

    Betty AnoninTX

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  3. I found this on the internet, so it's not written in stone:

    The 'old' way of printing/writing included the rule that where an 's' precedes a vowel, it is made to look like the 'f' of today - The letter 'f' was represented by ff (hence the old English surnames Ford and Forde, sometimes spelled Fford and Fforde (although strictly speaking, the capital shouldn't be there... the names should be in the lower case fford and fforde).

    I always thought it was a Welsh thing, myself.

    Betty von Susie

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    Replies
    1. ff/Ff/F - interesting subject. Thank you for bringing it up. The best post on this subject I have read today is this one by Chris Pitt-Lewis.
      Mike LONGWORTH...writes: In responding to a message by Barney Tyrwhitt-Drake, Chris Pitt-Lewis wrote:...
      So, maybe it should not be ff nor Ff but F, or maybe it should be Ff but not...
      Our surname was misspelled/misspelt by "authority" in documents in the 19th(?) century. And then people pronounced it that way, or so I am told. But maybe it was people pronouncing it that way that led to the incorrect spelling? Who knows.
      Betty Anonymous

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    2. Betty Henry's surname is Blanco White. Yup. White in Spanish followed by White in English. No hyphen, even. When we got married, I asked him if he wanted me to take his surname. I'd have done it, even though we were too old to have kids.

      "I don't see why you should. It's the silliest Victorian surname," he replied. Then we calculated how many authorities would have to be notified of the name change and we were too lazy...

      There are 4 Blanco Whites left (+ one by marriage): Betty Henry, his sister Sue, their mother & their brother. No children among the sibs, so when they die, the name dies with them.

      They are no relation to "Holy Joe," aka Joseph Blanco White, a man of at least three religions! But Holy Joe ended up famous among Unitarians in the UK, so the story I heard (which Betty Henry, who should know, denies) was that some ancestor of Betty H's wanted his son to follow in the family legal business. Since they lived in an area with a lot of Unitarians, the father gave the son "Blanco" as a middle name to go with "White." That way, when the kid grew up, he could use both names (Blanco White) and everyone would assume he was related to Holy Joe and take their legal business to them.

      (Betty Henry says that's not likely to be correct, but I don't care. I like it as a story, so I'm sticking to it.)

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    3. Betty Magdalen, I love name stories. Thanks for that one, it's a keeper! Even if Betty Henry can't verify it!

      For years we thought my maiden name meant we were from German roots and possibily related to a persons who's name was as reliously notorious as your Holy Joe. Turns out our Luther came from England and they've traced his roots back to before the Roman's got there. Personal Name History can be a fascinating thing! (Well, not for Prof Vue der Plane or most my family, but for me, YES!)

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