dotFAF.com | -gay VS -gey - Printable View

I had an interview for a new job on Friday and coming back i thought i'd go shoping for another suit in Wood Green. It was a long bus journey and i got bored reading so i started reading road signs, billboards and stuff. The i notice the council wasnt consistent with it's spelling of "Haringey". On some bill boards it was spelt with a -gay on some bins it is spelt with an ending -gey.

Now i'm confused... I came back home and went thru some of the mailing they send us. There's the same inconsistency. Their official URL[1] is with a -gey. Abe says it's spelt with a -gey and that she lived here for [insert random number here] years. But even on thier site they sometimes[2] use the ending -gay

Anyone know of a reason why this should be so? Is it an error that's spreading? If so which one is right? Abe says maybe it's supposed to promote homosexuality... and asked if there were a lotta -gays in my area. Anyway i dont think i wanna go into where that conversation led to.

The spellings of HARINGEY AND HARRINGAY are different because the latter relates to the area east of Turnpike Lane , the roads between Green Lanes and Wightman Road are known as the Harringay Ladder because they are almost parallel, like a ladder.

Haringey is the WHOLE of the boroughs of Tottenham, Wood Green, Hornsey, some of Muswell Hill etc . It is a much larger area , hope this helps.

Received this a week ago from Hugh Flouch. He sounds like he knows what he's talking about:

Both spellings are correct. Like many place names in Britain, spellings vary because many were passd down by oral tradition. Even when record by writing became more common variations persisted. As late as the late 19th century mapmakers et al couldn't agree on the gey or gay issue.

Both names have thier origins in a saxon chieftan called Haering. "Haering's Hege" means Haering's enclosure. Hornsey is also a derivation of these 2 words. Harringay (more usually, but sometimes -ey)as a place name was the name of a manor house which stood at the top of the hill between present day Hewitt and Allison Roads. After it was demolishd in 1885, it's name was given to the suburb both east and west of Green Lanes from Finsbury park in the South up to Wood Green.

The Borough of Haringey was established in 1965 from the old boroughs of Tottenham and Hornsey. I guess they chose the new borough name because Harringay is about dead centre and isn't dominant so was probably considered a fairly neutral choice favouring neither old borough. Not sure why they favoured the -ey spelling - maybe to differentiate it from the area Harringay -- soruce: Hornsey Historical Society, etc.

It doesn't really help, although I take your point. They are obviosly from the same word. So why the differentiation? I live in Turnpike Lane, and it is playing merry hell with my equilibrium, and I will not rest till it is sorted out.

maybe we should mobilise and go see the council to tell them to make uo thier mind. :)

Theories abound as to why the spelling changed - maybe it was because 'gay' had come to mean something quite different by the 1960s, maybe they wanted the new borough to have a different name to any existing place, or perhaps they just couldn't spell.