Talk:Honor Oak

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[edit] Spelling

Why was the tree called "Oak of Honor" and not "Oak of Honour"? The article on American and British English spelling differences seems to indicate that -our endings in Britain go right back to the Norman Conquest. Mtford 12:19, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

It is possible that the spelling could be a hang over from the 16th/17th century (about the time the oak was named) scholarly debate over the use of -our/-or ending on English words. In a nutshell some British scholars insisted that -or be used for words of Latin origin and -our for French loans; but in many cases the etymology was not completely clear, and therefore some scholars advocated -or only and others -our only. It was only later that the British formally adopted -our (as used by Dr Samuel Johnson in his Dictionary of the English Language (1755)) and the US –or (partly thanks to Noah Webster). By which time Honor Oak was stuck with an anachronism as far as the UK was concerned. Nshimbi 17:42, 27 September 2007 (UTC)