Davano for davenport

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Mon, Sep 30, 2002 at 06:54:34PM -0400, Wendalyn Nichols wrote:
> Anyone--Joan?--familiar with "davano" as a short form of "davenport" in
> regional American speech? (Sorry, I only own volume 1 of DARE.) I'm doing
> some work for a British publisher and remembered my grandmother's "davano"
> when I was correcting their entry for "davenport." She was born in 1911, in
> Nebraska, of Pennsylvania Dutch stock, and moved to Montana in her
> twenties. This is the same woman who called parmesan '/par MEE zhun/
> cheese', so I'd like to know if "davano" is just another example of her
> idolect.

DARE has an entry for it with cites back to ca1955; it also identifies
it as a trademark (first use claimed to be in 1921), and considers it
"chiefly NW".

Jesse Sheidlower