Mencken Society

[jharo]

Why in return to sender do they iuse the term postman as oppsed to mailman as in 'Gave my letter to the postman'?

[Recusant]

Hello, jharo, and welcome to the Mencken Society Forum! You've asked an interesting questiion. 'Postman' is more commonly British, though not entirely unheard of in America. Otis Blackwell, the author of "Return To Sender," was an American. To get a definitive answer, we'd have to ask him, but unfortunately, he's not around to ask. My guess is that he thought 'postman' just sounded better. I agree with his choice, but maybe it's only because I've heard the song since I was a kid.

[RMH]

It may have to do with "singability"; "postman" simply sounded better there than did "mailman", at least to the author. I'll have to check to see who wrote "Please Mr. Postman"; the version with which I'm familiar is the Beatles', and of course the use of "postman" in the lyric would have felt quite natural to them. But I wonder about the nationality of the author, and I don't believe it was Lennon-McCartney. In any case, an interesting question.

[RMH]

To answer my own question, it turns out that "Please Mr. Postman" was written by the Motown in-house team including Brian Holland. Perhaps "postman" is/was favored in the UK, Detroit and Georgia (which I think was Blackwell's home turf). Somehow that seems an unlikely geo-lingual (?) distribution, though.

[Bestprice]

Thanks for the information man . That was an interesting post .


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