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HelpRe: Esmé vs. Esmée
in reply to a message by Theodora'sMommy
Esme, with that spelling, has been used exclusively for girls since the 19th century here in South Africa. Only by Afrikaans namers, to my knowledge. Saffers have always been bad at French - the default European language studied in most schools was always German, though French is taking over as Africa opens up to us: we've got a large Congolese population, for instance.
Swift example: I knew a man, would have been in his 90s by now, whose name sounded like George but was spelt Georges "so that people wouldn't think it was Georg". Make sense to you? I thought not!
I like Esme a lot. The best teacher I ever had, I think, was called Esme, and it was DH's aunt's mn, after some relative of hers. Funny, though: I'm quite relaxed about Esme being fem, but other misplaced French spellings tend to bug me. For instance, Herschel is familiar though dated as a Jewish fn, and I like it, but some years ago we had an international cricketer who was not even slightly Jewish and was named Herschelle, pronounced just like Herschel. Still can't get my head around it.
If anything can make Esmeralda possible, I suppose it's Esme! Though Granny Weatherwax is a hard act to follow.
Swift example: I knew a man, would have been in his 90s by now, whose name sounded like George but was spelt Georges "so that people wouldn't think it was Georg". Make sense to you? I thought not!
I like Esme a lot. The best teacher I ever had, I think, was called Esme, and it was DH's aunt's mn, after some relative of hers. Funny, though: I'm quite relaxed about Esme being fem, but other misplaced French spellings tend to bug me. For instance, Herschel is familiar though dated as a Jewish fn, and I like it, but some years ago we had an international cricketer who was not even slightly Jewish and was named Herschelle, pronounced just like Herschel. Still can't get my head around it.
If anything can make Esmeralda possible, I suppose it's Esme! Though Granny Weatherwax is a hard act to follow.
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