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Re: Anaple
in reply to a message by Lethe
I've only encountered it as a Scottish variant of Annabel. If you don't emphasise the -bel in Annabel (it usually gets a secondary stress, and the main stress falls on the first syllable, the Ann-) then you can easily hear it as Annab'l, and from there to Annap'l is no great distance. As for the single n instead of the usual double, that makes no difference to the pronunciation so it's nor a surprising change. Annabel is originally a Scottish name, based on some long-ago person's misreading of Amabel, so there's your connection!Very interesting to see it turn up as a surname. Thank you for that.All the best
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Thanks, I had thought of that but it didn't seem to fit with it being concentrated in one area of Scotland. (I edited my post just as you replied). Perhaps it's something in the Ayrshire accent, although it's not a particularly distinct one like the East Coast. Maybe a bumbling Ayrshire clerk was having a bad day and wrote Anaple instead of Anable and the parents decided they liked it!
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