BARRINGER-L Archives

From: "Tim Merrill" <>
Subject: [BARRINGER] Barringer spelling
Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2001 17:32:07 -0400

Thought I’d throw in my two cents about the spelling of the name Barringer.
You can get onto the German white pages online and search for names. When I
typed in Barringer, I discovered about a dozen people in all of Germany
spell their name that way. About a dozen more countrywide spell it Baringer.
But when I typed in Beringer or Behringer, I got thousands of hits.

The story I always heard was that the original immigrants to Pennsylvania
spelled it with an “e”, but to try and anglicize it and appear less foreign,
they changed the spelling to Barringer (with either one or two r’s) The same
desire to “be American” caused Jakob to respell his name Jacob, Katrina
Catherine, Mattias Matthew, and so on.

Also in German, a, o, and u sometimes change their sound. In German, this is
indicated by putting an umlaut (two little dots) over the vowel giving ä, ö,
and ü. Trouble is, all American typewriters (and some German ones) don’t
have those little dots. If you have one of those dotless typewriters, the
convention in Germany is to type ae, oe, or ue to indicate an umlauted
vowel. Americans don’t usually follow that convention, however, and just
type the vowels without the dots or the extra e. So you end up with three
spellings for everything.

Württemberg (the normal German spelling)
Wuerttemberg (the spelling that a German would use on a typewriter without
the dots)
Wurttemberg (the spelling most English-speakers use)

Or München/Muenchen/Munchen (Munich)

Got all that?

Tim

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• [BARRINGER] Barringer spelling by "Tim Merrill" <>