linguistics question

I have a friend of Scottish descent who has done extensive searching of his ancestry, but is left with a mystery. His surname, Salmon, he tells me, was derived from "Solomon", but he wonders why the "l" came to be silent. One thing he is sure of is that it happened prior to exposure to American English (so can't be a sort of back-pronunciation as if similar to the fish).



I was speculated that maybe there was some phonological change general to the language that made that combination of sounds no longer allowed at some point.



Any ideas?

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