Etymological and Non­etymological Spellings of FALCON and SOLDAN (SULTAN) in Caxton's Paris and Vienne and Some Related French Versions

Abstract

This study scrutinises how William Caxton, who had spent dozens of years on the continent as a Latin-, French-, English-, and Flemish-using multilingual merchant, employed etymological spelling in his translation of a romance from French to English. The time was around the end of the fifteenth century, when etymological spelling was prevalent in French, and across the Channel, parallel phenomenon was already in motion. A substantial number of examples of etymological spelling in English are reported to have existed long before this, notably written by multilingual authors. Recent studies in this field state that, unlike in the traditional view where etymological spelling in English is discussed predominantly in relation to Latin, more attention to the influence exercised by French is called for. In this context, it is worthwhile to examine whether Caxton's translation reflects spelling conventions of the original texts. Quantitative and qualitative examination of Caxton's etymological and non-etymological spelling of FALCON and SOLDAN (SULTAN), in contrast with that of FAUCON and SOUDAN in the closely related manuscript and printed editions in French, pointed to peculiar inconsistency in Caxton's choice of etymological forms. It is inconsistent not only in the sense that the forms vary, but also in the sense that the variation is not in accordance with any of the French versions. The results support the idea that in the process of introduction and stabilisation or standardisation of etymological spelling, different lexical items show different tendencies, and different language users reacted in different ways even in contemporary settings, and even when they were dealing with the same text.