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Where did the curious tradition of transliterating English u (sound ʌ) as Russian е come from? I remember at least three examples off the top of my head: trust -> трест, lunch - ленч (now obsolete), and Dundee -> денди. Judging by the fact that the latter was used by Pushkin ("как денди лондонский одет..."), the tradition must be at least 200 years old. But why on Earth?
Edited: Dundee has nothing to do with денди, it's a different word. Lunch and trust are still on the list.
1.dandy noun [ C ] UK /ˈdæn.di/ US /ˈdæn.di/ a man, especially in the past, who dressed in expensive, fashionable clothes and was very interested in his own appearance: an upper-class dandy (Cambridgedictionary.com )
So Pushkin is not to blame.
2.Траст trust The word траст was borrowed from English as a term for financial arrangement at the end of the 19th century.
Слово заимствовано в английском языке в конце XIX века как экономическое понятие. В экономике "траст" – и процесс, и результат. Как процесс: траст – это передача активов в доверительное управление, под попечительство. Как результат: траст и есть сами доверенные активы.
Then one more borrowed word appears, a derivative from trust, трест and it means a group of enterprises.
В конце XIX века в русском языке появляется еще одно производное от trust слово – трест. Им стали обозначать особую организационно-правовую форму бизнеса - объединение нескольких предприятий, которые добровольно и в этом смысле - доверительно отказывались от своей коммерческой самостоятельности и подчинялись единому управлению.(dictionary-economics.ru.)
3 As for lunch and ленч some sources say it was mispronounced, others show the formal "luncheon", which might have been the cause of mispronunciation, but nobody can say for sure.
