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ArchivesRe: Evelyn
in reply to a message by vigdis
I don't know how the name became feminine, but I could guess why the pronunciations are different?
It's only a guess but I could suggest that maybe the name was originally pronounced eve-il-lin and was later contracted. Many English words have lost an unstressed syllable like that. Words ending in -ed, like "braked" for example, would be pronounced "bray-ked" rather than "braykd".
Probably Evelyn was contracted first to something like eve-uh-lin and then eve-lin. If the contraction happened around the same time as the name became feminine, it's possible that all the young girls were being called "eve-lin" by their young parents with (for lack of a better word) "young" accents, while the older man were called eve-il-lin because, being older, they had either not incorporated the pronunciation change or felt disinclined to change the way they'd been saying their own name for years.
Maybe?
It's only a guess but I could suggest that maybe the name was originally pronounced eve-il-lin and was later contracted. Many English words have lost an unstressed syllable like that. Words ending in -ed, like "braked" for example, would be pronounced "bray-ked" rather than "braykd".
Probably Evelyn was contracted first to something like eve-uh-lin and then eve-lin. If the contraction happened around the same time as the name became feminine, it's possible that all the young girls were being called "eve-lin" by their young parents with (for lack of a better word) "young" accents, while the older man were called eve-il-lin because, being older, they had either not incorporated the pronunciation change or felt disinclined to change the way they'd been saying their own name for years.
Maybe?
This message was edited 3/14/2016, 11:50 PM
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More simply, EEv-lin may be the received pronunciation which developed through continuous use within families. The common modern pronunciation of the feminine name is more likely simply how people who see it written without context assume the name was used and pronounced.
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