From hand to mouth A house fallen from its mound

The 19th century was a time when took place a heated argument about the proper pronunciation of Michel Montaigne’s name. As a tribute to the works of Alain Legros, this article aims to focus on a kind of “dual use”, that can be observed in printed books: Montagne and Montaigne, a very common practice attested until at least the French Revolution, and to try to understand the history of this phonetic debate and the reason why it was so fierce.