标题: How to Pronounce the Eponym of Gerrymandering [打印本页] 作者: choi 时间: 5-25-2018 12:13 标题: How to Pronounce the Eponym of Gerrymandering Reid, J Epstein and Madeline Marshall, Dear America, We All Say 'Gerrymander' wrong; Elbridge Gerry's hei5rs wage lonely battle for using a hard G, as he did. Wall Street Journal, May 25, 2018 (front page) https://www.wsj.com/articles/att ... er-wrong-1527178009
("The issue is whether to say 'gerrymander' with a soft G, the way nearly everybody does or with a hard G as in Gary -- the way Mr [Elbridge] Gerry himself did")
Note:
(a) This article is locked behind paywall. There is no need to read the rest.
(b) This article throughout uses an uppercase G, whereas Wikipedia uses a lower-case g (except in the title). For the latter, see hard and soft G https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_and_soft_G
("The sound of a hard ⟨g⟩ (which often precedes the non-front vowels ⟨a o u⟩) is usually the voiced velar plosive [ɡ] (as in gangrene or golf) while the sound of a soft ⟨g⟩ (typically before ⟨i e y⟩) * * * In English, the sound of soft ⟨g⟩ is the affricate /dʒ/, as in Genesis, giraffe, and gymnasium")
(c) "The first Elbridge Gerry [1744-1814; governor of Massachusetts 1810-1812; vice president 1813-1814] signed Declaration of Independence, was an important figure in adding the Bill of Rights to the Constitution and ended his career as vice president to James Madison [president 1809-1817]. He's not remembered for any of that. Instead, his name is indelibly linked to the drawing of political districts for partisan advantage in 1912 when he was governor of Massachusetts. * * * In January 1912, Mr Gerry, a Democratic-Republican, and his party held majorities in Massachusetts legislature. Using the 1810 census, lawmakers drew state senate districts designed to keep the opposition Federalist in minority status. The Boston Gazette, a Federalist newspaper strenuously opposed to Mr Gerry, publishing a cartoon morphing an Essex County senate district onto a winged and clawed salamander. Headline: 'The Gerry-mander. a [sic] new species of monster.' The resulting outcry cost Mr Gerry re-election later that year, but the Democratic-Republicans retained a majority in the state senatethanks to the map he had signed off on. Massachusetts lawmakers were hardly the first to benefit from skewed political lines. In England, some House of Commons districts that included a tiny number of voters were known as 'rotten boroughs' until an 1932 reform ended the practice. Before the first congressional election in 1788, Virginia Gov Patrick Henry drew a US house district to separate James Madison from his supporters, in an attempt to keep his fellow Founding Father from Congress."
(i) Forthe cartoon, see gerrymandering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering
(section 2 Etymology)
(ii) "in 1788, Virginia Gov Patrick Henry drew a US house district to separate James Madison from his supporters, in an attempt to keep his fellow Founding Father from Congress"
(A) James Madison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Madison
(section 5 Member of Congress, section 5.1 Election to Congress and adviser to Washington)
(B) Political party of both James Madison and James Monroe would be the same: Democratic-Republican, with James Madison would be a co-founder of that party (along with Thomas Jefferson). (I use would be" because in 1788, the Democratic-Republican Party would be a couple of years away in the future.) See Democratic-Republican Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic-Republican_Party
(between 1791 and 1793 - 1825)
(d) Gerry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerry
("Gerry is both a surname and a masculine given name. As a given name, it is often a short form (hypocorism) of Gerald or Gerard")
It is, in my view, understandable that people mistakenly pronounce Gerry as the last name the same way as, as the first name.