Geoduck (1882)>McLoughlin

[Laurence Horn]

At 5:54 PM -0600 11/10/02, Millie Webb wrote:
>  > Well, at least we know (or we've been given to believe we know) where
>>  this one came from:  the skiier's parents named her partly for Picabo
>>  (a town in Montana or some such state where they were living at the
>>  time; these were emeriti hippies, evidently) and partly for
>>  peek-a-boo, which she loved playing as a toddler.  (Before this
>>  point, they hadn't gotten around to naming her at all.)  This leaves
>>  it open how Picabo, the town's name, was/is actually pronounced.  I
>>  take it not as a homonym of "peek-a-boo", though.
>>
>>  larry
>>
>
>And the big question?  What kind of flaky "emeriti hippies" don't get around
>to naming their child until she is a toddler and well into the "peekaboo"
>stage?  :-)  :-)

I think it had something to do with her being old enough to have
developed enough character to make it possible to choose an
appropriate name.  After all, if her favorite game as a toddler had
been 5-card stud and they lived near Poker Gulch, they would have
named her Poker.  (Or perhaps Poquer.)

>We live in Madison, Wisconsin, and until we had lived here through a
>football season (we moved here in mid December), I had no idea Brett Favre
>spelled his name like that.  I had heard most "Farr", and only occasionally
>"Farv", with the "v" very "lightly" pronounced.

Is that regional, or just a case of the labiodental being effectively
swallowed after the /r/, i.e. rendered inaudible though still
articulated? Is there really a regional dimension for "Farr" vs.
"Farv"?

In case any non-football fans are wondering, Favre is from Cajun
country in Louisiana and went to college in Mississippi.  So the name
is legitimately French; I don't know if the metathesis is something
practiced down there as well as in Wisconsin, or if he was /favr(@)/
chez lui.   For a southern boy he's adapted very well, having never
lost a game when the temperature drops below 40 degrees, which it
does rather often in Green Bay, and he's started more consecutive
games by far(v) than any other quarterback in history.

larry