Bouey knife (Bowie knife) (Jan. 25, 1836)

[James Harbeck]

>"Buidhe" indicates that the vowel is [u]. But where does the English
>spelling, "Bowie," which has plausibly led to the spelling
>pronunciation with [o], come from?

"Buidhe" doesn't necessarily make the main vowel
"u" -- in fact, I would normally read it as
[bwij@]: "broad" b (Irish has "broad" and
"narrow" consonants, and many of the written
vowels are just there to indicate the consonant
quality), meaning put a superscript w after it,
followed by [ij@] ("narrow" dh is a palatal
glide, same as "narrow" gh). Depending on
dialect, you could get [bij@] or [bwij@] or, I
suppose, [buij@]. The main vowel should be [i],
and the u is an on-glide. To get to "Bowie" from
it, just make that on-glide a little longer --
take it up to a full syllable of its own -- but
keep the rest the same, and from that, lower the
vowel in the first syllable a bit. A lot of the
Anglicizations of Irish names mutate them
somewhat. Those with an interest in that
particular subject might find Brian Friel's play
_Translations_ of some interest -- it has a bit
with English surveyors coming up with versions of
Irish place names: "báile beag", which means
"little town" or "village" and would be something
on the order of [balj@ bj at g] but with the j
superscript, becomes "Ballybeg", for instance.

James Harbeck.

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