BULLOCKS - euph/typo/LA pron.?

[Baker, John]

        There's a detailed discussion at http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/donner.asp.  Here's the evolution:

        Original 1823 publication of "A Visit from St. Nicholas," anonymous but probably by Henry Livingston:  Dunder and Blixem (Dutch for thunder and lightning).

        1837 reprint published by Charles Fenno Hoffman:  Donder and Blixen (to rhyme with vixen).  Snopes speculates that Dunder may have been changed to Donder to reflect its pronunciation.

        1844 publication by Clement Clarke Moore, who until recently was thought to be the poem's author:  Donder and Blitzen.  This linguistic muddle (Dutch for thunder, German for lightning) remains the poem's standard text.

        1906 republication by The New York Times:  Donner and Blitzen (German for thunder and lightning), beginning the confusion that continues to this day.

        1949 recording of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," written by Johnny Marks:  Donner and Blitzen, probably following an erroneous copy of the poem's text that used Donner rather than Donder.  It is the famous and, to me, completely abhorrent recording of this song by Gene Autry that seems to have put "Donner" firmly in some people's minds.

John Baker


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf
Of Peter A. McGraw
Sent: Tuesday, May 03, 2005 12:42 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: BULLOCKS - euph/typo/LA pron.?


Donner is German, donder is Dutch for 'thunder', and Blitzen is German,
bliksem is Dutch for 'lightning'.  The versions of Night Before Christmas
that I've found in a cursory search on the web use either "On Donner and
Blitzen" or "On Donder and Blitzen."  I seem to remember running across a
version with "On Donder and Bliksem" somewhere, but I can't find one now
and I can't find a version on the web that I know to be the original.  So
either Moore chose one Dutch and one German word for the two reindeers'
names or he chose Dutch words and they somehow morphed into their German
cognates in popular usage over the years.  Note that "Bliksem" is slightly
closer to rhyming with "Vixen" than "Blitzen" is.  In either case, neither
Donner nor Donder is a simple typo.

Peter Mc.

--On Tuesday, May 3, 2005 9:35 AM -0400 "Baker, John" <JMB at STRADLEY.COM>
wrote:

>         Ah, yes.  "Donner" is a frequent mistake for "Donder," the
> reindeer's name in "A Visit from St. Nicholas" (also known by its first
> line, "'Twas the night before Christmas").  I assume that the mistaken
> use of "Donner" is the typo you mean; "Blitzen" looks pretty much like
> "Blitzen" to me.



*****************************************************************
Peter A. McGraw       Linfield College        McMinnville, Oregon
******************* pmcgraw at linfield.edu ************************