Date:  Mon, 15 Dec 1997 23:26:41 -0500
From:  Laurence Horn <laurence.horn[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALE.EDU>
Subject: Re: Poker; Jew; Pimp; White House; Java; Johnny Cake; Salt River; at
     al.

Beverly Flanagan writes,
>  On journey cake: If the term originated in New England, it would be
>  pronounced r-less, hence folk-shifted to "johnny." Since Philadelphia
>  was r-pronouncing, the newspaper doesn't see (or jokingly pretends not
>  to see?) that the new term has nothing to do with a man's name. DARE
>  must have this explanation, but I don't have it at hand.
>
I'm not sure which etymology Barry was earlier presupposing, nor do I have
a DARE on me as I write, but my understanding has always been that "journey
cake" was a second-order folk-etymology. While "johnny cake" derives--so
I've read--from a Native American (Narragansett?) term local to Rhode
Island that 'ought' to have come out something like "jonakin", "journey
cake" is itself a motivated reconstruction of johnny cake. Not that
different a history from, say, "Welsh rarebit" as a motivated
reconstruction of the historically correct "Welsh rabbit", at least insofar
as the "folk" involved in each case aren't really the FOLK per se, but a
prescriptivist who claims to know the true story and of course botches it
all up--or so I'd like to believe. Is this wrong?  Is there (contra my
sources) a real "journey cake" antedating the first "jo(h)nnycake"?

Larry, writing from Connecticut (not too far from johnny cake country)