There’s similar confusion over the letter Z as it appears in surnames in Ireland and Scotland. Gaelic doesn’t have the letter Y and scholars, perhaps unwisely, decided to express that sound using the letter Z instead. So the surname Dalziel is correctly pronounced Dee-Yell. (But sometimes now spelled Dalyell). Menzies is pronounced Men us or Min us. McKenzie was originally pronounced McKinney. Because of this rather confusing arrangement, in many cases people have started pronouncing the names the way they are spelled. So you can have two totally different pronunciations of the same word or two quite different spellings of the same surname.
So don’t worry too much about the “correct” spelling of any surname, or why a couple of letters may have disappeared over the years. Or whether it was Mc or Mac. (It was originally neither. Early documents mostly use M’). Elwyn On Wed, 13 May 2020 at 10:42, Jim McKane via CoTyroneList < [email protected]> wrote: > Well, I was very surprised at the correct answer............ > > https://blog.eogn.com/2020/05/12/how-do-you-pronounce-ye-2/ > > Enjoy! > > Jim McKane > Kitchener, Ontario > _______________________________________________ > CoTyroneList Mailing List > Mailing List Email Address: [email protected] > Change Your Preferences: > http://cotyroneireland.com/mailman/listinfo/cotyronelist_cotyroneireland.com > Mailing List Archive: https://goo.gl/mQCKrY > _______________________________________________ CoTyroneList Mailing List Mailing List Email Address: [email protected] Change Your Preferences: http://cotyroneireland.com/mailman/listinfo/cotyronelist_cotyroneireland.com Mailing List Archive: https://goo.gl/mQCKrY
