[Ads-l] An unusual contrast: Haley vs Hayley

[Mark Mandel]

I met a young woman yesterday whose name is Haley. As I often do, I asked
if she would tell me about that rather unusual spelling, explaining that as
a linguist I'm interested in names. She said that her father wanted to name
her with the more common "Hayley", but her mother wanted people to
pronounce it /'helɪ/ instead of /'he͡ɪlɪ/.

Mark Mandel

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org