Mods please move to General Questions…
I know where it is, but I don’t get the explanation of where the word comes from. According to this site What is the origin of the word middlesex? - Answers the word Middlesex comes from the word Saxon.
Southern England was occupied by Saxon tribes and divided into Wessex (West Saxons), Sussex (South Saxons), Essex (East Saxons) and Middlesex (the central Saxons).
So how does the word Saxon become -sex? Why not Middlesax?
Vowels are about the least stable part of a word, as it changes in time.
In Old English, Saxon was also spelled Seaxe, pl. Seaxan. The name probably deriving from the Seax.
So, you can drop a letter in either direction…
As a native Middlesexian (Middlesaxon?) I can say that i’ve heard it pronounced in many an accent and find it very easy to believe that it could just be a shift in pronounciation.
An earlier thread that may be of interest: Essex, Sussex, and Wessex... why not "Nossex"? - Factual Questions - Straight Dope Message Board
Forget about that. I ant to know why there’s no Nossex (North Saxon).
Moving from Cafe Society to General Questions.
The Nossex tribe swiftly died out, for obvious reasons.
Rick made the same joke in the thread to which I provided a link. Great minds think alike!
Haven’t you heard of No Sex Please, We’re British?
The transition to Middle english from Old english basically squashed all diphthongs into monophthongs and /ea/ turned into /a/. We can see it at work in other words like weax and healf which became wax and half. As to why the diphthong /ea/ became /a/, I do not know.
Anyone want to have a picnic at Seax-on-the-Beach?
nm…ninja’d
Of course, neither Wessex nor Middlesex exist any more as counties (though the latter may still be used in postal addresses. Sussex still exists, but in “reality”, The Only Way is Essex.
“Good evening, I’m from Essex, In case you couldn’t tell…” Not actually very proud of the “reality” show, but the song is good.
…Middlesexual?
I used to live in Middlesex, but I think it disappeared (mainly into Greater London) around 1965.
However there are still Middlesex County cricket and chess teams…
Not in England, perhaps, but there are Middlesex counties in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Jersey and perhaps other US States.
I always thought it was ‘sex’ as in ‘section’. Middlesex would be the section west of Essex (east section), north of Sussex (south section) and east of Wessex (west section). But apparently, I’m wrong.
Strange how few of those diphthongs have carried over in isolated cases in local dialects.
If you happen from around Barnsley way then you will pronounce ‘Tea’ using both the ‘e’ and the ‘a’ separately, it then sounds like ‘taiya’.
There are a few other words that they do in the same way.
When Cholmondely can come to bepronounced “chumley” and Leicester can come to be pronounced “lester” and lieutenant can come to be pronounced “leftenant” jumping from sax to sex doesn’t even begin to be inexplicable.