Yags and other onomastic peculiarities

[Geoffrey S. Nathan]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
At 09:59 AM 2/5/2001 -0500, Richard Coates wrote:
>On the age front, when is the first /r/ > /z/ that people know of? I am aware
>of someone with the surname Harriman being called /haez@/ and another with the
>surname Farrar /faez/ around 1960-4.

I've been following the discussion with some interest, although I admit to
never having heard the -za suffixes myself.  But, even though I'm a
phonologist by profession, I don't think that /r/ > /z/ is the right way to
think about what's going on here.  That is, I don't think the /r/ somehow
became a /z/.  Let me engage in some idle speculation.
I suspect that the thin edge of the wedge with this innovation was the 's'
hypocoristic (as in Yags, probably also 'bags'--'I file a claim on').  We
are presumably talking about an r-less dialect, which would make things
like [haer] for Harriman unpronounceable (unlike, say, Al for Alan).  There
are probably minimality effects here--a preference for names that are at
least a metric foot long (not unlike hot dogs, I guess ;-) ), so there is
felt a need for an empty schwa to make the name 'big' enough.  So probably
the route is:

laeri > *laer > laez (by suffixation) > laez@ (by insertion of an empty
nucleus)

A possible analogy might be with various hypocoristic formations based on
Margaret.  Common ones are, of course, Maggie (again, note absence of /r/),
but I've also heard Mags.

Apologies for taking a wild, unreferenced swing here (I'm sure there's lots
written on Margaret/Maggie/etc.), but I thought I'd toss in my tupenny worth...

Geoff



Geoffrey S. Nathan
Department of Linguistics
Southern Illinois University at Carbondale
Carbondale, IL, 62901-4517
Phone:  (618) 453-3421 (Office) / FAX (618) 453-6527
         (618) 549-0106 (Home)
                                                         geoffn at siu.edu