AQUIRK of linguistic history explains why Sir Menzies Campbell's first name is pronounced Mingis.

It can be traced back to the alphabet used by Irish scribes who arrived in Saxon Britain in the eighth century, and taught the Anglo Saxons to write.

The letter yogh, used in middle English and Scots, was pronounced yoch, then later ye and gi. Chris Robinson, director of the Scottish Language Dictionaries, said: "Before the Irish scribes arrived, old English was written in runes. But this fell out of favour with the Normans, whose scribes disliked non-Latin characters.

"They replaced yogh with a y or g sound, and in the middle of words with gh. But the Scottish retained the yogh in personal and place names."

The rise of printing in the sixteenth century coincided with the decline of the yogh, and it tended to be rendered in print as a z, and pronounced as such, which helps explain the discrepancy between the spelling of Menzies and the way it is pronounced.

However, to confuse matters further, it is not as simple as transposing the z for a g when speaking the name.

Ms Robinson said: "You've got the upper y sound from the back of the mouth and the n sound going to meet it (z).

There's a sort of assimilation of the two sounds."

To add to the uncertainty, the pronunciation of Menzies varies across Scotland: in the north, many still use the -enz version; elsewhere, it is -ing. So the Scottish newsagent chain is referred to as both John Menzies and John Mingis.

Every Dundonian will know that the district known as Menzieshill is pronounced Meenishill, with locals softening the e and dropping the g for effect.