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Question
#59897. the_peacemaker
asks:
Why is Samuel Pepys's last name pronounced "Peeps"?
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robboy
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I guess that's has to come under the category of, 'That's Just The Way Of It'. Like why Green Bay's Brett Fahvre's last name is pronounced 'Farv'.
Oct 10 05, 8:50 PM
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peasypod
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Found this:
"The most probable explanation is that the name in the seventeenth century
was either pronounced 'Pips' or 'Papes'; for both the forms 'ea' and 'ey'
would represent the latter pronunciation. The general change in the
pronunciation of the spelling 'ea' from 'ai' to 'ee' took place in a large
number of words at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the
eighteenth-century."
Taken from-- http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4117/4117.txt
Oct 10 05, 11:21 PM
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ing
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Thanks peasy, I read a really good explanation along those lines somewhere some time back but I couldn't find it. Horror of horrors, it's in a real ink and paper book!
Oct 11 05, 12:06 AM
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