Fwd: Re: Gray/Grey

[Lynne Murphy]

>How does the American "gray" vs. British "grey" play
>out in proper names?  The Salt Lake telephone
>directory shows two columns of "Gray" but only about
>ten "Grey". Is this relationship reversed in Britain?

I don't have a white pages at the office, but there are 3 people
named "Gray" in the university phone directory, and no "Grey"s.

The OED (I'm using the 1st edn) gives some history, which I'm not
going to type at length here, but it says the 'grey' spelling became
popularized in the UK at some point in spite of the fact that early
lexicographers (incl. Johnson) had preferred 'gray'.  The earliest
citations of the earlier form of the word have an ash 'graeZ' (Z =
the script zed), and from that point, there is e/a variation.  The
OED says that the Times (of London, that is) claimed in 1893 that it
always uses 'gray', but I've no doubt they've changed since then, but
my search on their website (www.thetimes.co.uk) came back as a 404.


Lynne
--
M. Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 3AN    UK
phone:  +44(0)1273-678844
fax:    +44(0)1273-671320