The hambone redux

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 3:12 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> You have to remember that very few country colored folk had access to
> the kind of education that would have taught them anything about
> Classical Latin and grammatical gender. I'm sure that both sets of
> parents invented "Delecta" and "Davidica" off the tops of their heads,
> without the foggiest notion that    "-a" had anything to do with women
> or (historically) with the Feminine gender. There are Biblical male
> names like "Noah," "Joshua" (Josh away"), "Elija," "Jonah," etc.
> ending in [-@] to provide examples.

Conversely, I know of a girl with the (Biblical male) name "Nehemiah",
or "Miah" for short.


--Ben Zimmer

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org