Talk:Travellers Rest (Nashville, Tennessee)

Travellers' Rest, Traveller's Rest or Travellers Rest
So far I have found three different spellings for the plantation. "Travellers' Rest" is the spelling in the NRHP index entry. "Traveller's Rest" is suggested on the webpage of the feature in the NHRP. See National Register Information System for both these spellings. The webpage of the museum (museum website) uses "Travellers Rest" which is the spelling used in the article.

This looks to me like a classical trilemma, the difficult choice of three options. What makes it more difficult even, is that the NRHP, who you would think is a reliable source, offers two different spellings. That takes a little off of the weight of this resource, regarding this question.

From the grammatical point of view I would rule out "Travellers' Rest", as this refers to more than one traveller. What I have read about the house is that Overton referred to just himself as the traveller, out on horseback for days in a row as a circuit judge. That would make "Traveller's Rest" the grammatically most correct spelling of the three, referring to only one traveller. Isn't that right? But then ... maybe John Overton was not good at grammar or people did not care much about apostrophes at that time and he named it grammatically incorrect "Travellers Rest".

That seems to me like the question to ask here: How did John Overton himself name his house? Whether grammatically correct or not is not so much the issue, the authenticity of the name is important. That's why I chose the spelling from the museum website, if they have an exhibition about Overton and the house, they should know best what the name of their place is. Unfortunately, authenticity is about facts and by definition, fact questions cannot be solved by voting on the issue. But opinions are always welcome and helpful.

Any suggestions how to further complicate or solve this? doxTxob \ talk 22:17, 22 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Interesting trilemma. It stands to reason that it has been known by all of these names over the years. Considering that the current name is the one used by the current management of the property, I think that name should be the one to use as the article title. The others might be appropriate to have as redirects. (Interesting that no one-L spellings have turned up.) --Orlady (talk) 23:37, 22 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the input. If all three options from the original trilemma were available with just one L also, that could become a hexalemma alright. It looks like the double L spelling is more often used by decendents of British settlers, as it seems to be more common in the British English. doxTxob \ talk 00:10, 23 October 2008 (UTC)