Since it’s been so long since I’ve done more than upload stupid photos or Twitter updates, I thought I should tackle a very important issue.  Why do people spell “duchess” as “dutchess”?

A few years ago, Fergie from the Black Eyes Peas (I can’t believe I’m writing about her!)  released an album called “The Dutchess.”  I was kind of annoyed by it, but I didn’t care all that much, cause it was a Fergie album, after all.  I thought maybe she was Dutch or something, or maybe there was some other pun that I wasn’t getting.  No big deal.  Then today I read an album review about a band called The Dutchess and the Duke.  That bothered me also, but since I’d then seen the word misspelled twice, I got curious.  Was I wrong about how to spell it, or are we changing our mind?  This is an important question, so of course I’ve done a little bit of research.

My first step was to do a quick search to see what kind of numbers I’d find.  Dutchess: 3,100kGh.  Duchess: 11,600kGh.  (Dutchess when you exclude references to Fergie and Dutchess County, NY: 21,300kGh.  Perhaps Google isn’t as reliable as I’d like.)

Next I looked it up at m-w.com, and as I expected, got the t-less spelling.  When I searched for it with the T, I got nothing except a suggestion that perhaps I was looking for “duchess.”  Okay- so I’m not totally wrong, but still.  Then to be sure, I checked out dictionary.com, the free dictionary, the 1913 Webster’s, and finally wiktionary.  They all wondered whether I was looking for duchess, except for wiktionary, which gave

Noun

Singular dutchess

Plural dutchesses

dutchess (plural dutchesses)

1. Archaic spelling of duchess.

Awesome.  So it’s an archaic spelling, which is cool, though I’m still not convinced that those artists were intentionally going for that old17th century (or whatever) feeling.  I wasn’t quite satisfied though, so I simply asked google “Why do people spell duchess with a t?”  That gave me a yahoo answers page where two people said to spell it with a t (both of whom got two thumbs down votes) and one person who said not to spell it with a t.  (The questioner originally wondered how to spell it because that is what she intended to name her “shitzhu,” which is funny and ironic and, however you spell it, a terrible name for a dog.)

I kept poking around, because it’s a Monday and I’m a loser, and I found an awesome letter to the editor (pdf!) of the New York Times regarding the spelling of Dutchess County, New York.  Apparently it was named after some old duchess and the Times said that people incorrectly spelled it with a T, as if they all subconsciously felt a connection to the Dutch that settled so much of New York.  The letter writer informed the Times that they were not Dutch wannabes but in fact using the original, archaic spelling.  The best part of the brief letter:

It may have been patriotic in the Massachusetts colonists to throw the tea overboard in Boston Harbor, but it would be just the reverse to throw the “t” overboard in Dutchess County.

The date?  February 10, 1895!  Later on, in 1899, the discussion in the Times continues, with reference to Benson John Lossing. Mr. Lossing had written (somewhat) extensively about the T in Dutchess county.  Again, from the Times:

To The New York Times Saturday Review:
In an article in THE SATURDAY REVIEW of Sept. 16 as to the correct way of spelling “Duchess” County, Joel Benton refers to Mr. Lossing’s decision of dropping the “t” out of the name, and says: “It is true Mr. Lossing, who was a voluminous and industrious historian- but who would not have claimed to be a philologist or verbal critic- was led in a thoughtless moment to sanction the unfortunate neology which confuses a few strangers.”
The phrase “thoughtless moment” is not at all applicable to that able historian, and to show that the question, on the contrary, had been well considered and discussed by Mr. Lossing, who always held to his method as the proper way of spelling the name of his native county, I quote from a letter received from him bearing date, July 27, 1890.
“At that time- 1683- the name of the wife or widow of a Duke was spelled with a ‘t’ in it, and so it remained until the appendix of Samuel Johnson’s great dictionary in 1755.  He reformed (?) the English language by introducing foreign words, and among other changes was that of the wife of a Duke.  He introduced the French method of spelling it, ‘Duchesse,’ leaving out the final ‘e.’  Previous to that time the word ‘Duchess’ being spelled with a ‘t,’ our county was so spelled through ignorance as to its origin, or to careless inadvertence until within a comparatively few years.  About twenty years ago, I raised the question in one of the Poughkeepsie papers, which took issue with me.  But when the origin of the name was then made known intelligent people began to spell Duchess County without a ‘t,’ and now it is so generally spelled by intelligent people.  Two histories of our county, since published spelled it without a ‘t,’ and I procured that spelling in the United States census for 1880.  So my decision is, the proper way to spell the name of our county is ‘Duchess.’ ”
New York, Sept. 12, 1899.

I’m glad to see that Dutchess county is still spelled with a T; little archaisms, especially in toponyms, add a lot to our understanding of our history, culture, etc.  However, in reference to the spelling of the title for the wife or widow of a duke (or a woman holding the rank of a duke in her own right!), I’d keep the T as we’ve been keeping it for the last couple hundred year: tossed overboard.