Braintree

[Joel S. Berson]

Now wait a minute -- is there any evidence that Braintree was
anything else than named (and spelled) after Braintree, Suffolk --
from which, IIRC, many early eastern Massachusetts settlers came --
or that "Brantry" was anything else than some people's phonetic
spelling?  I'm sure I can find similar peculiarities in 17th and 18th
c. documents, although it would require some searching.  Braintree
was, of course, the site of Thomas Morton's "Merry Mount."  The site
http://www.townofbraintreegov.org/braintreehistorical/index.php
says "The area was resettled and incorporated as the town of
Braintree, named after the English town of Braintree in 1640."

Joel

At 2/25/2008 10:12 AM, Damien Hall wrote:
>There's a town in Suffolk, England, called Braintree.  Is it possible that at
>some point someone thought that people saying 'Brantry' /braentri:/
>were merely
>mispronouncing 'Braintree', and that person hypercorrected the spelling, which
>then stuck?  That would presumably be by analogy with so many other English
>placenames that reappear multiple times in the different states of New, ahem,
>England.
>
>I'd like there to be a satisfying phonological explanation too, but maybe the
>idea of a false equivalence with the English name goes part of the way.
>
>And, yes, whenever I see 'Braintree' on either side of the Atlantic,
>I think of
>'brain stem' and the appearance of human brains in general too.
>
>Damien Hall
>University of Pennsylvania
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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