GHD> From: [email protected] (Gordon Dewhirst)
GHD> Date: Sun, 17 Dec 95
GHD> 
GHD> How do you pronounce Hargraves and Hargreaves? I would pronounce both 
GHD> to rhyme with saves or graves and I am confident the folks back in 
GHD> Lancashire and Yorkshire pronouce them that way except some probably 
GHD> drop the 'h'.

JSQ> From: [email protected] (John S. Quarterman)
JSQ> Date: Mon, 18 Dec 95 20:54:55 -0600
JSQ> 
JSQ> JG> Are there more examples of ea being pronounced as a?  Is this from
JSQ> 
JSQ> break
JSQ> steak
JSQ> 
JSQ> As it happened, we had three British houseguests this weekend,
JSQ> so I tried an experiment.
JSQ> 
JSQ> The one from Edinburgh pronounced Hargreaves to rhyme with leaves.
JSQ> The one who grew up in Hong Kong and Abu Dhabi said it similar to
JSQ> behaves as almost one syllable.
JSQ> The one from London pronounced it exactly like one of my aunts does,
JSQ> with a bit of longish e sound fading immediately into a long a sound.
JSQ> 
JSQ> All of them said it as at least somewhat of a diphthong, not as
JSQ> a simple vowel sound.  The closest American vowel to what the English
JSQ> woman said is long a.

GHD> Date: Tue, 19 Dec 95 01:40:00 EST
GHD> From: [email protected] (Gordon Dewhirst)
GHD> 
GHD> I have two reasons for suggesting a long a for Hargreaves, one based
GHD>  on experience and the other intuitive. By the way, I would expect 
GHD>  the sound of the long a to vary with the accent of the speaker. A 
GHD>  scotsman or a Yorkshireman would have a longer a than someone with 
GHD>  an Oxford accent. My reasons: When I was a young lad going to school 
GHD>  in the old country one of my teachers taught us about James Hargreaves 
GHD>  who invented the cotton jinny, one of the most important advances in 
GHD>  the mechanization of the textile industry. My teacher pronounced it 
GHD>  with a long a so it would never occur to me to pronounce it any other 
GHD>  way. James, by the way was a Lancashireman.  Second, I have yet to 
GHD>  come across the spelling Hargreeves or Hargreives but Hargraves is 
GHD>  common.  Now it is well known that up to the latter half of the 19th 
GHD>  century most people were illeterate or largely so and even those 
GHD>  primarily responsible for recording births, deaths, baptisms etc., 
GHD>  the curates and registry clerks, had a modest amount of formal i
GHD>  schooling.  Consequently, names were frequently recorded phonetically. 
GHD>  In towns like Colne where Hargreaves was common it was more likely to 
GHD>  be recorded correctly. In towns where the name was rare, a phonetic 
GHD>  spelling was more likely. (more on that later). If one accepts that 
GHD>  phonetic spelling was frequent then it follows that the traditional 
GHD>  pronunciation of Hargreaves was with a long a and hence the prevalence 
GHD>  of Hargraves and the apparent absence of Hargreeves.
GHD> This leads me to add to the confusion by proposing Dewhirst's Theorem: 
GHD>  That the probability that a particular current family name is Hargraves 
GHD>  rather than Hargreaves is directly proportional to the square root of 
GHD>  the distance of that family's ancestors from Colne or Bradford at the 
GHD>  time of the 1851 census.

JSQ> From: [email protected] (John S. Quarterman)
JSQ> Subject: Re: Fowler's Modern English Usage? 
JSQ> Date: Mon, 25 Dec 95 17:44:32 -0600
JSQ> 
JSQ> Using a ... dictionary, it seems that break and great are derived
JSQ> from Old English, and steak is derived from Old Norse, while
JSQ> brake and grate are from Old French.
JSQ> 
JSQ> Both Old English and Old Norse are Germanic languages, and the 
JSQ> German pronunciation of ea is also similar to modern English long a.
JSQ> 
JSQ> Whatever the derivation, and I'd hardly consider my amateur 
JSQ> etymological examinations definitive, it's clear that every 
JSQ> Hargreaves I've ever heard pronounce the name uses a long a, and 
JSQ> that also seems to be the common pronunciation in England, as 
JSQ> Gordon has noted.  The variant spelling of Hargraves attests to 
JSQ> that pronunciation of Hargreaves, for that matter.
JSQ> 
JSQ> This kind of phonetic spelling change is common.  Other examples 
JSQ> include Peake becoming Peek, or Quatremaine becoming Quarterman.
JSQ> 
JSQ> The surprising part with Hargreaves -> Hargraves is that there 
JSQ> seems to be so little evidence of a connection between people of 
JSQ> those two spellings.
JSQ> 
JSQ> John