How is it spelled? Chainmaille? Chain mail? Chainmail?

As noted in "What is Chainmaille?", the word maille derives from the French word maille (mesh), which comes from Latin macula (mesh of a net).

It is because of this etymology that B3's founder, like many other maillers, prefers to spell chainmaille with an “le” at the end, as opposed to using the traditional spelling of chain mail. Well, that, and to distinguish our beloved craft from chain letters.  *grin*  Spelling chainmaille with an "le" also allows for more precise image or text search results on the Internet.

Note that some chainmaillers prefer the term "maille" as they consider "chainmaille" to be redundant.

Throughout the years, we've seen all of these alternate spellings of chain maille used by those in the industry:

  • chainmaille
  • chain maille
  • maille
  • chainmail
  • chain mail
  • chainmaile
  • chain maile
  • maile

Note that we're actually petitioning the dictionary people to add "chainmaille" as an acceptable alternate spelling.  In order to do that, we need to amass lots of press clippings that use the term as we spell it.  So if you come across any such references, we'd greatly appreciate it if you could please forward to [email protected]!

P.S. Yes, you'll find that we occasionally write "chain mail" or "chainmail" on our website.  It's not a mistake. We've used that spelling so that folks who are searching for those terms on the Internet will still find our website! :-)