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#111437 - 09/08/03 06:27 AM Re: Featherstonehaux
Faldage Carpal Tunnel Registered: 12/01/00 Posts: 13658	a quick search to confirm the spelling And did you confirm the spelling? How *is it spelt?
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#111438 - 09/08/03 06:18 PM Re: Featherstonehaux
JohnHawaii member Registered: 01/17/03 Posts: 171 Loc: Hawaii, USA	It appears, after googling, that it is actually spelled Featherstonehaugh.
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#111439 - 09/18/03 06:30 PM Re: Featherstonehaux
Kupatchka newbie Registered: 03/13/01 Posts: 36	Natchitoches, LA is pronounced NAK-a-tush, as opposed to Nacogdoches, TX which is pronounced exactly as it is spelled.
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#111440 - 09/19/03 03:19 AM Re: names
dodyskin addict Registered: 04/24/02 Posts: 475 Loc: manchester uk	It's the strangest thing, an alley near-ish my parents house is called Parkside Passage on the sign, yet it is pronounced Dog S**t Alley
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#111441 - 09/19/03 07:42 AM Natchitoches
Jackie Carpal Tunnel Registered: 03/15/00 Posts: 11580 Loc: Louisville, Kentucky	Nice to see you again, K. How did this place get its name, do you know? I don't recognize in it any language; in fact, to me it seems as though the Natch might come from one source and the toches part might be French. Aha! Creole? (Speaking of showing your dumb side to the world; hi, dody.)
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#111442 - 09/19/03 08:42 AM Re: names
AnnaStrophic Carpal Tunnel Registered: 03/15/00 Posts: 6511 Loc: lower upstate New York	Parkside Passage on the sign, yet it is pronounced Dog S*t Alley ROTFLMAO*
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#111443 - 09/19/03 09:44 AM Re: names
of troy Carpal Tunnel Registered: 10/17/00 Posts: 5400 Loc: rego park	In northern Queens, there is a lovely little 2 way street, that for a few hundred feet, is only a single lane wide.(the road is about 1/4 of mile long; only the last 200 to 250 feet reduce to a single lane) Officaly, it is Sand Hill Rd, but everyone calls it The Back Road.--another charming aspect of the road is the center point in the road is only a few feet about sea level, and frequently floods. _________________________ my other obsession
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#111444 - 09/21/03 02:07 AM Re: names
Capfka Pooh-Bah Registered: 06/28/02 Posts: 1624 Loc: Utter Placebo, Planet Reebok	When I first came to Northamptonshire (usually called Northants), the local radio announcers kept talking about this town called "Toaster". Took me a while and a quick squiz at the map to realise they were talking about Towcester. Which led me to look into the pronounciation of -cester names. Turns out there's a simple rule: If the -cester is preceded by two syllables, the -cester is pronounced as spelled, as in Cirencester - sirensester. But if the -cester is preceded by only one syllable, it becomes "-ster", hence Leicester - lester, Bicester - bister, Gloucester - gloster, yadda, yadda.
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#111445 - 09/21/03 03:30 AM Re: boroughs, burgs and burghs
jmh Pooh-Bah Registered: 03/22/00 Posts: 1981	I suppose that we should add Edinbura (Edinburgh) - not Edinburrow as furriners tend to call it. Maybe there is a similar rule for boroughs - Scarbura (Scarborough), Middlsbura (Middlesborough). Here's a discussion from another board: I think the answer is, at least in New England, that town-name-givers didn’t have a lot of imagination and liked to stick with the tried and true methods of their ancestors in Europe. There are many exceptions in other areas such as those risqué names in Pennsylvania (e.g. Intercourse, Blue Balls, etc., which were not chosen by the conservative German immigrants but by earlier ruffians). Standard European town endings such as ‘borough,’ ‘burgh,’ ‘bury, ‘borough,’ ‘boro’, ‘town,’ etc. evolved from ancient times and some forms were favored by various groups and nationalities and the people who came to the New World in many cases saw no need to break with tradition. To get a feeling for how these various town suffixes came about we need only consider the evolution of the ending (and word) ‘borough,’(as in Scarborough, Foxborough, Middleborough, Westborough). It started out in Old English as ‘burh’ and ‘burg’ and about the same time in Old High German as ‘burg’ (as in Gettysburg, Salzburg, Vicksburg, Hamburg) meaning ‘a fortress a citadel’ (in modern German ‘Burg’ means castle) and this carried over into Middle English for about 200 years with a huge number spelling variations [e.g. ‘borogh’ from which probably evolved the abbreviated form ‘boro’ (as in Malboro, Brattleboro, Goldsboro, Greensboro)]. The dative case of the Old English ‘burg’ resulted in the ending ‘bury’ (as in Canterbury, Danbury, Salisbury, Banbury). ‘Burgh’ (as in Edinburgh, Plattsburgh, Pittsburgh, Newburgh) is a Scots form with the derivative ‘burgher’ meaning the inhabitant of a borough). ‘Burg’ also appeared in Old Saxon and Dutch with about the same meaning. Later the sense became ‘a fortified town, and eventually just ‘town’ (as in Charlestown, Jamestown, Capetown, Yorktown, Provincetown). http://www.wordwizard.com/clubhouse/founddiscuss.asp?Num=4571
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#111446 - 09/21/03 03:43 AM Re: names pronounced strangely
jmh Pooh-Bah Registered: 03/22/00 Posts: 1981	The link above included reference to a few place names that I remember from reading Bill Bryson. In Illinois: Versailles pronounced Versalles Cairo pronounced Care-oh rather than Kyrow
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