How is this name properly spelled? It seems to me, an "Elliott" for almost five decades, that the majority of us spell our name with all seven letters, no matter how redundant that may seem.
One justification for the second "T" is in the pronounciation of similar words:
So, clearly, two t's are required to be sure that the "o" is short! Otherwise it looks French and is pronounced with a long "o" sound.
A correspondent from Middlebury University writes:
Dear Mr. McCrory: I recently came upon the section of your website devoted to the proper spelling of your name, Elliott, and felt the need to contribute my two-cents on the matter. You are correct in noting that the vast majority of individuals today spell the name with the full seven letters. You also correctly note that in modern English the double-t spelling makes sense for pronunciation purposes, as the name looks French with a single t. In fact, the name came to English from French and first appears after the Norman Conquest! The name is formed from the Old French diminutive form of the name Elie, the Old French version of Elias, the Greek form, i.e. the New Testament version, of Elijah. As such, the historical spelling of this name is Elliot. I found most of this information in the Oxford Dictionary of Names. My best guess as to the prevalence of the double-t spelling of Elliott would be similar to your original supposition: in English it makes more sense to have two t's because of the pronunciation. As to which spelling is "correct" per-se, wouldn't the spelling chosen by the individual be correct, regardless of the origin of the name or which spelling a majority of individuals uses? Best, name withheld |
In recent years, the six-letter, one-T spelling has crept into respectability. For example:
I went to Yahoo in June of 1999 and on Google and searched on the four spellings and enetered some of the hundreds of entries on each by hand.
Most significantly, I searched (using Google) for "elliott mccrory -elliot" and "elliot mccrory -elliott" and found that my name is spelled right about 11,900 times, and spelled wrong 4,270 times on the internet. So I will gladly jump to the conclusion that 40% of the entries that match "elliot" are SPELLED WRONG! So, there are only about 2 millions entires for Elliot that are properly spelled (IMHO).
Here is an interesting link into the Wikipedia. Note the lack of an entry to the dreaded six-letter spelling.
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There is also a rare spelling, Elyot, according to the Wikipedia.
Coming; Towns in the world with this name. The Wikipedia does some of this already.
Feel free to contact me with your own instances of the spelling of my name. URL's are useful.