Me too, but given certain educational methods of the past, I can also imagine it happening. Here's an example of teaching Latin in the 19th century. Read the first 1/3 from the link from today's front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36354213. Latin was taught by rote, by repeating without understanding. One of those head masters must once have thought it would be correct to call it "and per se and," and had the power to make generations do it.

On the other hand, why it would have become so widespread as to become a word is what makes me doubt the story.

Some probably did, the same ones that addressed their dad as "pay-ter".

I'm sorry, can you explain this one?

In British families of a certain class, at least on TV, the son would address the father in Latin as "pater" but with a long A sound. It comes off now as an absurd affectation, much like using "per se" regularly in the name of a letter.

From The Frumentary by William King (1699)[0]:

  U’s conversation ’s equal to his wine,  
  You sup with W, whene’er you dine:  
  X, Y, and Z, hating to be confin’d,  
  Ramble to the next Eating-house they find;...   
  And Per Se And alone, as Poets use...

See also an elaborate classroom game described in the Documents of the Board of Education of the City of New York (1861)[1]: "One [student] represents &—called ‘And per se and’—as being appended to the alphabet, but not belonging to it....The merriment of this pastime turns upon the endeavor of An’ per s’and to take precedence of Z, and so get fairly into the alphabet..."

[0] A 1781 printing: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101068156031&vi...

[1] https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433075984876&vi...

These are great. Did you just know about these already or did you research them just now? If the latter, how did you find these in such short order?

Always impressed by people who can find primary sources for things quickly!

In this case I just did a full-text search of HathiTrust's catalog for "and per se and" (quotes of course are part of the query). These are two results of many.

Not just a fisherman, but a teacher. Gracias!