From: Scott Sherwood (scottsherwoodjobsearch@yahoo.com)
Date: Thu Nov 25 1999 - 04:38:08 EST
--- Edward Hobbs <EHOBBS@WELLESLEY.EDU> wrote:
> But "Peabody" is another matter! Rod is right--the
> family AND town are
> called PEE-b'dee. > Edward Hobbs (for 19 years a
local, but I'm still a
> stranger here myself).
I missed most of this thread, but just noticed the
Peabody reference. It just so happens I am a Peabody
descendant and last week went to find the ancestral
Peabody family cemetery in Middleton Massachusetts on
East Street. Some of the markers are from the 1600s.
My family has been in this commonwealth continuously
since its establishment in the 1620s.
My grandmother's grandmother was Cate Peabody (
usually pronounced PEE'-b'dee by gramma ). In records
from the 1600s and 1700s, though, the name is
phonetically spelled Paybody, Pabody, Pebody, and
Peabody. The pronounciation seems to have been in a
greater state of flux over the years than the forms
of Koine Greek.
There was more than one Horatio Alger story among the
Peabodys, and they funded (and founded) museums,
institutes, and professorships. Joe Peabody of Salem
built a shipping empire from nothing. George Peabody
was a transatlantic Banker, a personal friend of the
British monarch, and the namesake of the town north of
Boston. He was a great benefactor of London's poor.
The Peabodys literally made a name for themselves.
Alongside the strange pronunciations of 'Peabody', New
Englanders have also preserved a great many other
examples of unusual speech. Some people may not know
that the Elizabethan forms "Thee" and "Thou" only died
out in Maine some time after 1950. That kind of thing
makes it easier to imagine the variety of speech that
must have existed in the holy land during the Koine
Greek period.
New England is a treasure trove of linguistic
oddities; this is arguably the oldest English speaking
part of the US ( and the first to teach Biblical Greek
in public school! ). New England's archaisms and
corruptions seem strange to the rest of the country.
Surely some parts of the holy land seemed as unsual,
or moreso, to the itinerants of the Koine period.
Happy Thanksgiving,( Eucharistos?)
Scott Sherwood
near Gramma's house in the Bay State
[Apologies for going off topic]
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