Elvises -> Elvi(i)

[Scot LaFaive]

>the evidently tongue-in-cheek rendering of "Elvises" as "Elvi", which has
>been going on for I'm not >sure how long (anyone?)

Found one on Google Groups from 1982: "no more griping about Elvi (plural of
Elvis) Options."

http://groups.google.com/group/net.music/browse_thread/thread/d62627eda5565b3f/27e89292f88e93aax

Scot


>From: James Harbeck <jharbeck at SYMPATICO.CA>
>Reply-To: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Subject: Elvises -> Elvi(i)
>Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2007 18:48:18 -0400
>
>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       James Harbeck <jharbeck at SYMPATICO.CA>
>Subject:      Elvises -> Elvi(i)
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>I don't think I'd been aware of this one until I heard a cousin use
>it jokingly today, but it seems a popular plural of Elvis (as in
>Elvis impersonators or "tribute artists") is Elvi, and I see that it
>is also frequently rendered with two i's, Elvii (Googling {Elvis
>"Elvi"} gets 91,300 hits, but some of those might be typographical
>truncations; {Elvis Evlii} gets 9,850).
>
>Of course, this is silly, since it's not "Elvus", but the -ii version
>also taps into something that I'm seeing rather often that kind of
>bothers me: using -ii rather than -i as the plural of -us. I suspect
>that it comes from seeing plurals such as "genii" and noting the
>double i and assuming that it's the proper plural for -us rather than
>realizing it's because it's from -ius.
>
>So this is a kind of double-barreled one here: the evidently
>tongue-in-cheek rendering of "Elvises" as "Elvi", which has been
>going on for I'm not sure how long (anyone?), and the mistaken use of
>-ii rather than -i as the plural of -us, which I have the impression
>of seeing with growing frequency of late, but of course I have no
>data to confirm that impression, and it would be bloody difficult to
>measure this one suitably.
>
>James Harbeck.
>
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>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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