The San Francisco call., 1897-11-28

far to convince every one that there are no
rules by which it can be told in advance
how all effort of this kind is going to
sound, however well known its spelling
may be. But the real enormities of the
English sy stem or lack of it can only be-
come apparent TO the careful student Of
such matters-and the more careful the
great er the enormlties. He will, it is true,
succeed in bringing out rule or two for
the guidance those " ho come after him,
but the rules will be few and the names
N any, so that his work is of little valne at
best. 1t can be safely said, however, that
an Englishmans name is his to muss up,
quite as much as his home is his castle,
and the results of the one are as incongru-
Gus as the castleship OF the other. There
are three name from the French, to take
an example quite at random. which came
into English at nearly the same time and
have much the same SOFT OF meaning.
These are Beauchamp, pleasant field;
Beauclerc, good writer, and Beautln, well
ended. all of them, it will be noted, having
the same word for their first syllable. VIII
it be believed that they are pronounced as
| If spelled beecham. with a long "e; bo-
clar, with long "o," and bitfin, with a
short 'i"? What, then, is the Law govern
ing the word 'beau" in com position?
There isn't any.
But there are a few laws, as has been
said. Stone" in combination with other
syllables, itself being the last, Is always
called stun" Thus Blackstone and Black
! stone are spelled indifferently buxton and
blaxton, while Gladstone is called glad
! stun. of course. Ou' at the beginning of
name is 100" long, as in Ouse. Ouless,
! Outram, Ousely and some others "Ough'
has the uniform sound of "uf'' in mono
! syllables as in CIough, Hough and Lough,
instead of being distributed a | over the
| alphabet, aS in common nouns. In the
| terminational ''cester" the two letters ''c''
and .e'' are not sounded, and they gener-
| ally succeed in drawing others down with
! them: Worcester and Leicester are we'll
known, Bicester (bister), Cirencester
! (siseteT) AMI some others not so much so.
"G'' is generally hard before ''e' and ii"
also, as in Egin, elliott, Gill; Clifford and
some others. but short in Nigel, Latin
name, and in Gilett, as coming from
Giles, another Latin name. Termina-
tionaI "ohrn" is ''oon," as in Bohun and
Mobun. "Hope'' is ''up'' with a short
u, as in Courthope, Stanhope (cortup,
stanup), and many more. Ham" Is
''um," the vowel sound ben. The OBJ
this soften the ''t'' it may happen to fol-
! low, therefore Gotham is Sol m. Hoam
is hutm, Bsntham bentm, and so on.
'Y~' as al ending might better have the
| y" out, for 0 dys is olds; Sandys SANDS;
f@pys. peps, peeps or plps; Knoilys, noiz
and Wemys, weems. Initial "a" is long
in Aram and Avon, and it is also long
in the first sylables of Barring, Bagehot
(baj je-u;), and Bathurst where the "ih'
is sounded as in the word "then." Err.
is generally pronounced ar, as in Berke-
ley, Derby. Herts, Herlford, Derwent,
and many mo,e. This is the old English
rule in suci Matters as may be seen in
Bartram ard Bertranl, Bernard and Bar
nard, and in the common, nouns "mer-
chant and clerk" from which come
the not unusual family names Marchant
short "u'' of to-day, as IN Cromwell,
B0ylyn and others. And 1t Is just here
Or herea bouts that rules stop.