1215: Name-Variation (John and Elisabeth) Apr 7, 2018

It is not uncommon that older, popular names will have regional variations when given to children over a large area. For instance, the Germanic 'Johan' and 'John' also appears as the Romantic 'Jean', 'Juan', and 'Gianni', the Celtic 'Sean' and 'Iwan', and the Slavic 'Ivan' and even 'Honza', which all ultimately derive from the Hebrew 'Yohanan', relating to the name of G*d. While the phonetic differences among these do have some randomness, they can illuminate the similarities among certain phonemes. With the name 'Elisabeth', which in Scottish is 'Elspeth' or 'Elspet', the difference switching from [b] to [p], or at least 'b' to 'p', it shows how in certain environments—such as following an [s]—the two are more or less identical. Furthermore, [θ] (written as 'th') exists in relatively few languages including English, so it should not be surprising that a Scottish variation includes a [t] instead.

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