[Ads-l] An unusual contrast: Haley vs Hayley

[Laurence Horn]

As in the (potential) contrast between “daily” and “Daley” (e.g. the former Chicago mayors).  Only for me, “daily” can vary between the /‘deli/ (Mark, do you really have final -ɪ in these?  I have -i) and “Daley” pronunciations.  Similarly for “Bailey”.  One that requires the -/eli/ pronunciation (when I worked my way through the alphabet) is cèilidh (a.k.a. kaylee) or Kay-Lee, but I don’t have much occasion to pull out that pronunciation in either case, since nobody has ever invited me to any of the former and the latter is a defunct toy store chain.  

LH


> On Apr 8, 2018, at 10:22 AM, Mark Mandel <mark.a.mandel at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> I met a young woman yesterday whose name is Haley. As I often do, I asked
> if she would tell me about that rather unusual spelling, explaining that as
> a linguist I'm interested in names. She said that her father wanted to name
> her with the more common "Hayley", but her mother wanted people to
> pronounce it /'helɪ/ instead of /'he͡ɪlɪ/.
> 
> Mark Mandel
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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