#111417 - 09/03/03 10:08 PM
Names
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veteran
Registered: 11/22/00
Posts: 1289
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I don't recall that we have ever turned our attention to names which are pronounced in a strange fashion, or not as one would expect them to be from how they are written. (Of course, I could be wrong and we have been into this, given that I disappear from time to time and miss a good bit, especially since posts multiply faster than rabbits when you're not watching them, and I tend to whiffle thru them pretty fast when I have to catch up).
I suppose we have all heard of Cholmondely, pronounced Chumly; and Beauchamp, pronounced Beecham; and Grosvenor (Grove-ner). Surely we all have some to contribute. Here in Crabtown, we have two street names which always throw the furriners. Aliceanna Street is pronounced by the natives as Alice Ann (Street). Bentalou St. is Bent-low.
How about y'all? What gems lurk out there?
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#111419 - 09/04/03 05:37 AM
Re: Names
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 06/24/02
Posts: 7184
Loc: Vermont
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another oldie, but Worcester-wuster soory, no time to get out the IPA... 
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formerly known as etaoin...
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#111423 - 09/04/03 10:38 AM
Re: Names
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old hand
Registered: 01/18/01
Posts: 1156
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I think this is technically a YART but I think things beyond a certain age shouldn't count as YARTs - no one can remember them and besides, there are usually enough new people who haven't discussed the subject!
My Newfoundland favourites are:
Baie D'Espoir: pronounced "Bay despair" (opposite of the true meaning, which is "Bay of Hope")
Pouch Cove: pronounced "Pooch Cove", like a small dog!
Quidi Vidi: we say "kiddie viddie" which is the usual pronunciation, although you do hear "Kw-eye-duh Veye-duh" from some folks
Argentia: it's "Ar-JEN-cha" and foreigners often try to pronounce the last syllable "tee-uh" instead.
LeMarchant Road: Newcomers often try to pronounce this with a French accent - pointless! Throw your French accents out the window when reading Newfoundland names! It's Luh-MAR-chent.
Others which people try to Frenchify (an easy mistake to make from the spellings) are Port-Aux-Basques and Baie Verte.
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#111424 - 09/04/03 06:50 PM
Re: Names
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addict
Registered: 03/09/01
Posts: 508
Loc: Metro Detroit (MI)
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Some Detroit-area street names that often throw non-natives: Gratiot - pronounced GRA-shit, not GRA-ti-ot Livernois - LI-ver-noy, not LI-ver-noiz Goethe - GO-thi (sorry, German-speakers) Schoenerr - SHAY-ner And of course di-TROYT, not DEE-troyt or day-TWAH I'm sure there are others, but they don't come to mind right now.
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#111425 - 09/04/03 07:03 PM
Re: Names
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Pooh-Bah
Registered: 08/27/02
Posts: 2154
Loc: British Columbia, Canada
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I know this was on the Boston thread a while back but when we asked for directions of foreign student he had no idea where Massetchusets Avenue was but he did know Mass-av Street.
I shouldn't laugh, I grew up thinking that there were two similar girls names: Penelopy and Penelope (to rhyme with cantalope)
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#111426 - 09/04/03 09:09 PM
Re: Names
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veteran
Registered: 11/22/00
Posts: 1289
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Nancy, your post reminded me of Legare Street in Charleston (SC), pronounced Legree (as in Simon).
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#111427 - 09/05/03 03:00 PM
Re: Names
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addict
Registered: 04/24/02
Posts: 475
Loc: manchester uk
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Blackley, pronounced Blay'lih Bacup, pronounced bay'cup Whalley Range, pronounced wolly rainj, as opposed to the beginning of Whalley, pronounced waily London, pronounced either landan ( south) or lundun (north) Mousehole, pronounced mowzull Gloucester, pronounced glostuh Llangollen, I spose that doesn't really count seeing as it is a different language. Beswick, pronounced bezzik Durham, pronounced durrem Shrewsbury, pronounced shrozeb'ree ( there is some debate about this though) Happisburg, pronounced hazeburra Derby, darbee Leicester, lestuh ( cester is is just stuh almost always) Salisbury, sorlsbree Greenwich, grennich ( and a thousand others, basically, one never prounces the w, although there are exceptions) Scone, scoon Wymondham, win dum Yarmouth, pronounced yarmuth ( any mouth endings are usually uth, and ton endings usually tun, er is usually ar- Berkshire=Barkshuh, and that's another thing, shire is never shire but shuh **edit, or sheer in Yorkshire**unless it is at the beginning of the name  ,bury is usually berry or bree apart from Bury which is Burry to everyone from around Bury and Berry to those from the place) Wapping, pronounced woppin ( there again you see, if the first vowel is an a then it is often prounced as an o) Wilbraham pronounced willbrum ( nearly all names have dropped the a-ham business as most of them have dropped or merged en le, except of course Chapel-en-le-Frith) Have you noticed that all these pronounciations are pretty much what you get if you say the name quickly a few times. I think in England at least it is more unusual to find places that sound exactly as they are spelt. I thought of a few ( a very few), listed below: Chorlton-cum-Hardy ( well maybe the ton is more like tun) Manchester York Blackburn
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#111428 - 09/05/03 04:33 PM
Re: Names
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stranger
Registered: 07/21/03
Posts: 10
Loc: Canada
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I have heard Ballyvaughan (Ireland) pronounced both Bally-vuh-hon and Bally-von, but I'm not sure which is correct.
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#111430 - 09/05/03 07:14 PM
Re: Names
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Pooh-Bah
Registered: 08/27/02
Posts: 2154
Loc: British Columbia, Canada
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He burned it so now it's burnt. (at least in my idiolect)
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#111431 - 09/06/03 04:21 AM
Re: Names
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 04/09/00
Posts: 3065
Loc: Jakarta
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Add:
Beaconsfield (Beckonsfield)
Wycombe (Wickum)
Reading (Redding)
Slough (rhymes with cow)
Bingley
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Bingley
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#111432 - 09/07/03 10:31 AM
Re: Names / name refusals
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 09/28/00
Posts: 2888
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This brings up another name related thing...
Here there is a major road called René Levesque that is called Dorcester by English people over 30.
A town named Lac Moreau by the government and Lac St Paul by it's inhabitants and anyone knowing the place.
And an autoroute called "the 10" by everybody but actually named "Autoroute of the Eastern Cantons"
(oh and our Beaconsfield is actually pronounced Beacon's field :-) )
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#111434 - 09/07/03 09:16 PM
Re: Names / name refusals
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 04/09/00
Posts: 3065
Loc: Jakarta
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In reply to:
(oh and our Beaconsfield is actually pronounced Beacon's field :-) )
So's ours by people who don't come from round there.
Bingley
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Bingley
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#111436 - 09/07/03 11:27 PM
Re: Names
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member
Registered: 01/17/03
Posts: 171
Loc: Hawaii, USA
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I recalled this classic from my stay in England:
"Featherstonehaux", pronounced "Fanshaw."
When I did a quick search to confirm the spelling, I found this web entry that says the word "fanshaw" is used to define words which are pronounced differently than spelled.
http://www.langmaker.com/db/eng_fanshaw.htm
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#111438 - 09/08/03 06:18 PM
Re: Featherstonehaux
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member
Registered: 01/17/03
Posts: 171
Loc: Hawaii, USA
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It appears, after googling, that it is actually spelled
Featherstonehaugh.
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#111439 - 09/18/03 06:30 PM
Re: Featherstonehaux
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newbie
Registered: 03/13/01
Posts: 36
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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
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addict
Registered: 04/24/02
Posts: 475
Loc: manchester uk
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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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#111444 - 09/21/03 02:07 AM
Re: names
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Pooh-Bah
Registered: 06/28/02
Posts: 1624
Loc: Utter Placebo, Planet Reebok
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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
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Pooh-Bah
Registered: 03/22/00
Posts: 1981
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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
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Pooh-Bah
Registered: 03/22/00
Posts: 1981
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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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#111448 - 09/21/03 06:31 PM
Re: names pronounced strangely
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member
Registered: 01/17/03
Posts: 171
Loc: Hawaii, USA
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Shortly after I arrived in Hawaii, I went to City Hall to ask directions to the Department of Motor Vehicles. I was told it was on "Camphor" Highway. Odd Hawaiian name, I thought. Not odd if you're a local and you know that the DMV is on Kamehameha Four Highway (Kam IV), named after the old King himself.
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#111449 - 09/30/03 03:09 PM
Re: names pronounced strangely
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stranger
Registered: 05/01/00
Posts: 24
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In Virginia, the town of Buena Vista is pronounced (prepare to shudder) Byoona Vista. The town of Onego is pronounced ONE-GO. In NC, the village of Valle Crucis is pronounced Valley Crews.
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