Is it chainmail, mail, maille, chainmaille, chain mail or what?
Technically, most scholarly sources agree that in the English language, it should be ‘mail’. ‘Maille’ is the French spelling, but it is also probably more commonly used, even among English speakers, as a way to differentiate it from the postal mail. ‘Chainmail’ and all its variants are actually based on misunderstandings caused by Victorian age scholars who took some liberties with the language to romanticize it. By definition, ‘mail’ means ‘armor made of chain’, so ‘chainmail’, ‘chain mail’, ‘chainmaille’, and suchlike are pointless redundancies. However, most maillers are forced to use the term ‘chainmail’ when explaining the art to the uninitiated, since it has become ingrained in popular culture. Many have begun to use ‘chainmaille’, so as to differentiate it from chain letters, which in recent years have often been mislabeled as chainmail on the internet. A small minority of maillers are considering the use of ‘mayle’, which is how the very first references to it in early modern E
