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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803 |
a quick search to confirm the spelling
And did you confirm the spelling? How *is it spelt?
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Joined: Jan 2003
Posts: 171
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Joined: Jan 2003
Posts: 171 |
It appears, after googling, that it is actually spelled
Featherstonehaugh.
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 36
newbie
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newbie
Joined: Mar 2001
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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Joined: Apr 2002
Posts: 475
addict
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addict
Joined: Apr 2002
Posts: 475 |
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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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
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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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 6,511
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 6,511 |
Parkside Passage on the sign, yet it is pronounced Dog S**t Alley*ROTFLMAO* 
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Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400 |
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.
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Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 1,624
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 1,624 |
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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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,981
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,981 |
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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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,981
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,981 |
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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