View Message

As someone who also does research and teaching for his living, I think you are too easily offended. And of course most websites are full of plagiarization. Anyone who spends much time looking at websites on any issue can easily figure that out! The Web is not the same thing as an academic journal and people who put up websites don't have to abide by academic standards of referencing. It would be nice if they did, but I'm not holding my breath. I hope I'm doing my part by trying to teach my students the difference between a peer-reviewed journal and Websites which can and are put up by anyone.

---

I also do not understand your comment about Searlait and Charlotte. This site clearly states that Searlait is just the Irish Gaelic form of Charlotte. It is the -otte of the original Charlotte that was a diminutive suffix. Whatever meaning if any -lait would have in Irish Gaelic is irrelevant.

---

By the way, your picking out the silly interpretation of Mackenzie in an attempt to refute my statement about false information going back to baby name books published before the Internet was invented doesn't wash. You are ignoring the fact that I did not say ALL misinformation went back to those books; I said "most". And as Rene has pointed out, the fact that so many sites give the same misinformation shows that for the majority of people who put up these sites the problem is plagiarization and poor research, not deliberate invention.