For some historical perspective from a 19th century mathematician:-) "'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,' it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.' 'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.'" Lewis Carroll -----Original Message----- From: Sean Smith [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, June 22, 2007 10:16 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [LUTE] Re: Pickering or Pickeringe? It's a poor imagination that can think of but one way to spell a word... or name. Should an artist get taken seriously when pursuing sameness? My 2 centimes. Sean "C.Etter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On 6/21/07 8:47 AM, "Stewart McCoy" wrote: > Spelling was not standardised in the 16th century as much as it is today. If > there was more than one spelling then, we tend to standardise it now. For > example, William Byrd's name was spelt Bird as well as Byrd, but we always > stick to Byrd now. If we have only one spelling, as in the case of Jane > Pickeringe, we have no choice, and the name should stay as it was. After > all, that's how she chose to spell her own name. Just to add a little bit to what Stewart wrote - it¹s worth emphasizing that standardized spelling was a *long* time coming! Samuel Johnson¹s dictionary appeared in 1755 & Noah Webster¹s in 1806. But it still took another hundred years or so of school marms drumming the rules of ³proper² spelling into generations of school kids, along with all those spelling bees, to get where we are today - baffled by the plethora of variant spellings for our favorite luters¹ surnames! We may feel baffled, but for most people of the past ³correct² spelling was a non-issue. Even for literate people, even into the late 1800¹s. Variant spellings are even more common for surnames than for regular words. There are supposedly six known autograph signatures of Shakespeare. Each one is spelled differently. It¹s kind of tough for people today to get past that idea that there *must* be one ³correct² spelling for a surname. Trying to find that correct spelling for a surname of someone who lived several hundred years ago is a bit of a fool¹s errand. Perhaps the best we can do is identify the most common spelling used by the person in question (if possible) & use that, but always remember this is just a modern convenience for *our* use. Back to lurking & luting.... C.Etter To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html --
