Talk:burgravius

Frequency statistics

Authorities record several spelling variants of the Latin burgrāvius. Du Cange lemmatises burggrāvius and also lists burgrāvius and burgraffius; Niermeyer lemmatises burchgrāvius and also lists burcgrāvius, burkgrāvius, burggrāvius, borchgrāvius, and burgrāvius; Ramminger’s NLW lemmatises burggrāfius and also lists burgrāphius and burgrāvius. Raw all-forms Google Books Search frequency statistics for all these variants, in descending order of frequency, are:

1. burgrāvius: 35,836 hits
2. burggrāvius: 31,167 hits
3. burcgrāvius: 5,866 hits
4. burchgrāvius: 3,520 hits
5. burggrāfius: 2,590 hits
6. borchgrāvius: 999 hits
7. burkgrāvius: 152 hits
8. burgraffius: 71 hits
9. burgrāphius: 43 hits

The last three of these are so rare that the forms *burkgrāviōrum, *burkgrāviōs, *burgraffiōrum, *burgrāphī, and *burgrāphiōs do not occur at all.
In the light of this evidence, I lemmatise burgrāvius on the grounds that it is the most common spelling and that it is the only form recorded by all three of du Cange, Niermeyer, and Ramminger’s NLW. — I.S.M.E.T.A. 13:02, 13 May 2015 (UTC)