About this site

My name is Ian Holmes. A few years ago I discovered the branch of motor sport known as road rally. Along with my wife, Lorrie, we road rally our 2014 Ford Focus in regular road rallies and my 1976 MGB in classic road rallies. In 2015 I took over the co-drivers seat for local rally driver Dan Little. This blog describes my adventures in all forms of rallying.

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Rallye or Rally?

I'm new at this. What's this deal with the spelling? Is it Rallye or Rally?
Good question. Basically it boils down to this, (and this is only my opinion). The sport is Road Rally, but the events are generally Rallyes. This is most certainly true in Europe where the real hotbed of Rallying is. The first Road Rallies were held in the early years of the twentieth century in France. "Rallye" is a French spelling.  I guess it has stuck. English speaking folks tend to use the Rally spelling. You can delve into linguistics and semantics if you want to but let's keep it simple and enjoy ourselves.
I also used "Rallye On" for the name of the blog because "Rally on" was taken.

1 comment:

  1. There are some dictionaries that refer to a rallye as a motorsport event. The term rally is typically defined as a gathering of people to support some kind of cause. I use rallye to distinguish our events from the latter. Arrowhead Sports Car Club once did a survey to see how those looking at it's site felt and the nod went to rallye.

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