Friday, December 17, 2010

Spelling of "Athabascan" through time

There has been much debate about how to spell the word Athabascan. Michael Krauss points out that the origin of the word is well-known, but four different spellings have been used (read his article here). The ATHAPBASCKAN-L listerv acknowledges this variation by combining the four spellings into one. Within Alaska the "b" spelling has predominated of late, with continuing debate regarding "c" versus "k".

Now thanks to Google Books it is possible to trace the four spellings through history. If we enter the four different spellings we get the above graph of frequency of mentions in published books (in English). This reveals a surge in the p-c spelling Athapascan in the early 20th century, followed by a spike in the p-k spelling Athapaskan around 1980. More recently the frequencies of b-k, p-k, and b-c spellings converge, with the p-c spelling falling out of favor. Bottom line: there are many ways to spell this word.

Try it yourself.
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2 comments:

  1. James Crippen12/18/10, 11:25 AM

    The increasing use of “Athabaskan” through the 1970s and 1980s is at least partly due to the HMCS Athabaskan (DDG 282) which is a destroyer in the Canadian navy. The drop in occurrence of this spelling in the 2000s is curious. I have no idea what the massive spike in “Athapaskan” is due to.

    The drop in usage of everything in the 2000s looks suspiciously like an artifact of the data set, not indicative of reality.

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  2. gary12/20/10, 9:28 AM

    Perhaps, but note that the phrase (2-gram) "HMCS Athabaskan" barely registers -- perhaps an artifact of using books rather than other media such as newspapers.

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