Sir, – In response to Frank McNally's characteristically witty reflections on the oddity of adjectives formed from proper names (May 5th), I can help out with the origin of "Shavian" for all things relating to Bernard Shaw. "The word Shavian", Shaw told his early biographer Hesketh Pearson, "began when William Morris found in a mediaeval manuscript by one Shaw the marginal comment, "Sic Shavius, sed inepte". Who but Shaw would take to himself the scornful derision of one medieval textual scholar on another? How Shaw-like, how Shavian. – Yours, etc,
NICHOLAS GRENE,
School of English,
Trinity College Dublin,
Dublin 2.
Sir, – Further to Frank McNally’s Irishman’s Diary, if Dublin people can be Dubliners, why can’t Cork people be Corkers? – Yours, etc,
LOUIS O’BYRNE,
Foxrock, Dublin 18.