alt Hacker NewsAccording to Etymonline (i.e. Douglas Harper), quite curiously, the "center" speling in English is actually older!
Quote:
The spelling with -re was popularized in Britain by Johnson's dictionary (following Bailey's), though -er is older and was used by Shakespeare, Milton, and Pope.
At the same time, it Etymonline traces the origin to Old French (14th century) which had it as centre.
Just because Milton, Pope and Shakespeare wrote "center" doesn't mean it was a good idea. The latter couldn't spell his own name the same way twice!
It's a good idea because spelling words how they're pronounced was one of the biggest achievements of the Western world and our broken orthography impairs literacy.
Only English has this insanity driven by people who simply don't like change, like the aesthetics of older spellings, or because they're a closet francophiles/latinophiles like Johnson, but try to justify it with nonsense about etymology because how weak the personal preference argument is.