9755: Re: 9746: From Hayti to Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: madison bell <mbell@goucher.edu>

Hayti is an English spelling-- I've never seen it used in French sources of 
any period.  French Haiti has an umlaut over the first i to remind you that 
it should be pronounced Ayiti, which was the Arawak's word for their 
island.....   The word Haiti was unlikely to have been in much use until 
1804 since the French colony was known as Saint Domingue until then.  after 
1804 the English began to talk about Hayti: The Black Republic &c..  In 
other words I'd guess this spelling came late and left early.  Bear in mind 
that at the end of the 18th century French was a much more fixed language, 
in terms of consistently orthodox spelling and things like that, than was 
English.

msb