Thank you, Michael, for your discussion about swifts:

The story also goes that during an AOU meeting many years ago, a paper
about swifts was delivered and some discussion ensued about how to
pronounce the common name of Vaux's Swift. After much debate, an elderly
gentleman in the back raised his hand, stood up, and announced that he
had been Mr. Vaux's private valet. He then explained that the Vaux
family pronounced the 'x,' so, therefore, the bird's name should be
pronounced similarly.

Bob Boekelheide
Sequim

>Oh yeah, there seems to be a local debate about how to pronounce 'Vaux's'.
>It's confusing, because it seems to be (and is) an obvious French name, in
>which case it would be properly pronounced 'Vo' with a long 'o' and silent
>'x', to rhyme with 'though'. What complicates it is that it is an Anglicised
>French name, dating to the time of the Norman Conquest of 1066 AD, when a
>bunch of French knights under William the Conqueror piled into southern
>England and became the ruling regime. Over time many of the pronunciations
>of the original French names flattened out and became different to those on
>the Continent. By the 1800's in England and America, the French 'au' sound
>('o') had become a more literal 'aw' sound', the 'x' became pronounced and
>'Vo' had become 'Vox', to rhyme with 'rocks'. The swift was named after an
>American, not a Frenchman, and hence is pronounced as the latter.