Doric?

There is a tradition among classicists of referring to the retention of inherited [ā] (where Attic-Ionic changed to [ē]) as "Doric alpha." This comes from the fact that students of ancient Greek are brought up on grammars which give Attic-Ionic as the norm: the only other dialect they meet is the Doric of lyric poetry, a and they therefore imagine that this is a diagnostic feature of Doric, a sound-change even. The term is unfortunate and meaningless: all the Greek dialects retain [ā] apart from Attic and Ionic.—A Brief History of Ancient Greek, page 107

<idle musing>
Yep. Me too.
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