Seeing how the names of the British place names came to be was very interesting! Make sure to watch the video through to hear some of the weird US city names, we have some strange ones for sure!
Like most countries there are places that are more well known that others and places that are more well known to the people who live in that country, so the more well known places even if the spelling and pronoucination is strange because its well known, we're likely be able to pronounce it and it feel "normal" to us saying it, however places that aren't that well known, we don't know every single city or town in the UK XD, we would have a hard time pronouncing like you guys would.
In English, the letters "w" and "y" are considered to be "semi-vowels". That is, they are considered to be consonants, despite the fact that their sound is clearly that of a vowel - "ooh" and "ee" / "aye" - and, in words like "sky" or "spy" or "dry" or "wry", then the "y" there is clearly 100% acting as a vowel. Sounds like a vowel. Looks like a vowel. Tastes like a vowel. And is totally a vowel. But, no, it is officially a consonant. So, in such usage, it's called a "semi-vowel" to imply "it can be like a vowel sometimes". Except this is somewhat nonsense, because "w" is said like "ooh" and "y" is said like "ee / aye". And these are clearly, without doubt or hesitation, vowel sounds. They are vowels. There's really no "semi-" about it. I mean, otherwise, words like "sky", "spy", "dry", "wry", etc. would technically be vowel-less words, wouldn't they? Anyway, the point is that where English is weirdly schizophrenic about whether "w" and "y" are actually vowels - though, seriously, just listen to them and they're 100% vowel sounds - Welsh is having none of that nonsense. And, in Welsh, the vowels are "a", "e", "i", "o", "u", "w" and "y". Yes, there's no "semi-vowel" nonsense. The letters "w" and "y" are vowels in Welsh. Welsh is actually 99.9999% phonetic (that is, it's 100% phonetic, except for a single exception to the rule with the letter "y" that I'll explain later), so the sound of a letter is invariant. That is, if you learn how to voice each of the letters of the Welsh alphabet, then their sounds never change and you can pronounce any Welsh word you encounter. The letter "w" is always like "ooh". And the letter "y" is like "uh" - also known as the schwa or the obscure vowel - unless it's the last "y" in a word, then it's like "ee", as it is in English. Unfortunately, in "Ynysybwl", we've actually got multiple words joined together there. This is similar to how German also likes to ram many words together to create super-long compound words. Welsh does that with placenames too. Separating it out, it's actually "ynys-y-bwl". Where "Ynys" is the Welsh word for island, and "y" is simply "the" and no-one's quite sure of the origin and meaning of "bwl" exactly - lost to the mists of time - but it's said exactly like English "bull". So, "ynys" is said like "uh-niss", then "y" is just "uh", then you say "bull" like in English. Like "uh-niss-uh-bull". And, yes, Welsh does have single letter words. You'll notice that I said that "y" - pronounced "uh" - is the Welsh for "the". There's also "a" - meaning "and" - and "i" - meaning "to" - and "o" - meaning from. That one is also a bit mad for speakers of other languages, that a single letter can also be a word. So the common English-speaking complaint that placenames like "Aberystwyth" or "Ynysybwl" supposedly "have no vowels" is quite wrong. It's just that, in Welsh, "w" and "y" are vowels. Not just "semi-vowels" but 100% vowels and Welsh kids learn that the vowels are "a, e, i, o, u, w, y". There's plenty of vowels in there, once you realise that "w" and "Y" are vowels, and sound like "ooh" and "uh" respectively. I mean, Welsh is a completely different language to English. You've got to expect that, therefore, Welsh placenames might look odd to English eyes, just as, like, French or German or Polish placenames can look odd to English eyes too. But if you appreciate the differences between Welsh and English, none of this is at all strange or even that complicated. Honestly. (Well, kind of like how those Native American placenames aren't always real obvious about how you say them because, come on, it's a different language, so of course it's going to be different and not fit with the English language rules.)
It’s not so much that we’re touchy about our language, its just that we like taking the piss out of our American cousins for misusing it! We have a bit of a dry way of poking fun, but we (most of us) don’t mean to offend by our banter, it’s how we talk to friends. Relatively new to your channel, and love your content. Thanks Ethan.
Idk a lot of British people go around thinking that the way British do things is the correct way and other ways are incorrect. Its like how much Brits love to complain when Americans call it soccer. Its literally a correct term. Im not American but British exceptionalism is pretty common And these people often weren't bantering btw
@@Me-ui1zy - How could you tell? It’s not as if we don’t all know that Americans call football soccer to distinguish it from American football. Our humour can be *very* dry, and we love a piss-take. The more we take the piss, the dryer we get. The Australian sense of humour is very similar to the Brits in this regard. We Brits love to pretend that we own the language, and watch other English speaking nations bristle as we point out their “errors”. My American friends have got used to the way I rib them, and now join in with the fun, hitting back with their own dry jibes.
@@Me-ui1zy I have over the years met a few Americans, most of which we’re doing sports scholarships and spending a year studying in the UK. They all called football “football” not “soccer”, their claim being that it’s the people in America that aren’t involved in or really follow sport that call it soccer.
Bury, most people say Berry, but people in Bury say its putting it in the grave to bury the emphasis on UR..even dialects and local areas call them different
I'm actually learning Welsh at the moment and although words and names look scary to native English speakers, once you learn the sounds that go with each letter combination it's actually much more consistent than English.
is it true a welsh speaking guy on countdown on channel four said pinkty pong is welsh for microwave, and wibbly wobbly is welsh for jelly fish was he joking
@@hermandadams I don't know about the others but "popty" is a word for oven so "popty ping" is something of a slang term for a microwave rather than the "official" word.
@@hermandadams Meicrodon is Welsh for microwave and jellyfish is a slefren fôr. It's a stupid joke that as far as I'm aware Russel Howard started. I've never heard anyone even use the phrase "wibbly wobbly".
There is also a valley named Longdendale which means long valley valley. When it was first mapped by the Ordnance Survey they called it Longdendale Valley but more recently they dropped the unnecessary extra valley.
Ynysybwl has a completely regular pronunciation... So long as you know how to say things in Welsh. Its a different language and like any language it has its own spelling and pronunciation rules. It has sounds that English doesn't and English has sounds that it doesn't. This is all dependent on accent of course though.
@@stevieinselby the verb to slough is pronounced sluff , but the place name isn't. Mind you the town matches the pronunciation of " The Slough of Despond". ( Slow to rhyme with plough LOL).
0:50 it's not just foreigners/tourists who get the place names wrong, people who live here but just not close to your particular town will probably get it wrong too
If you think about it, some places have more Roman origins. Some places have more Saxon origins and some places have more Norman origins so it's a bit of a mish mash. My area has Roman origins as an example
I grew up in Flitwick, pronounced "Flittick" (You can see it on their map.) It has a train station that JK Rowling used to go through and named a character after. I'm not a Harry Potter fan at all, but hearing the W pronounced in the snatches of film I did see hurt me, deep inside.
@@j_fenrir see, thing is a lot of place names here were written down using letters from previous alphabets that looked similar to the Latin one but had different pronunciations and usages. So "Ye olde pub" is pronounced "The old pub". The Y isn't a Y, it's a thorn, which is a letter we don't have any more that represents 'th'
We used to rent in Flitwick before buying four miles down the road here in Harlington. Coincidence number two is that the first I ever heard about JK Rowling's then categorised kidult first book was from a fellow commuter on that very trainline. The "Bedpan" line (Bedford to St Pancras). That said, my favourite mispronounced places are both in Norfolk: Happisburgh : Pronounced Haze-bruh Wymondham : Pronounced Wind'm
Jk was an adviser on the films which means it is actually meant to be pronounced with the w, overwise she would just tell them to pronounce it "properly"
blame, the celts, the romans, the vikings. the angles the saxons, the normans, plus all the languages letters that have not all languages have the same letters, then you have the dialects over 2000 years of people coming in leaving letters behind
That is true. We have words based on Latin, Saxon, Norman and Viking. So of course, our language that we speak in the UK doesn't make a lot of sense sometimes. Even I sometimes have no idea how to pronounce a word in English My area had definitely been settled by the Romans for sure.
@@corriehingston6744 I know some of the accents/dialect in the north east (Norse side), some from those areas can understand geordie because of the tonal intonations just by how the words flow they can understand another language
Yeah I live near Newcastle-upon-Tyne and always wonder why southerners have to add an r to castle to pronounce it Newcarstle then say we don't say it properly.
I try to say the name of a place like the people who live there, so I'm careful not to put an r in Newcastle. I'm interested to know how people from the North say Bath (as in the town).
@@DayVid2.0 Did a delivery last year in Irvine, a detour to get fuel and headed up to Milngavie for a reload. Boy was I surprised when I went through Moscow!
Some places (looking at you Shrewsbury) are still pronounced differently by different communities today. Allegedly Manchester is a combination of celt and roman, the town of the breast-shaped hill. I wonder if there's a breast-shaped hill near Manchester, New Hampshire. I think my favourite one locally is Slaithwaite (slauwit, maybe?).
@@corriehingston6744 or shrose-bree. I think this is one of those places where even in the town itself the locals don't agree with each other about how to pronounce it. There are quite a few of those. I've even met UK Derby people who pronounce it Durby not Darby.
My understanding is that generally Shrewsbury to locals is exactly that, whilst Shrowsbury is largely from outsiders.... which tbh I have always found confusing as you would expect the technically "wrong" pronounciation to be more likely local laziness/dialect/slang
Ynysybwl is actually one of the easier place names to pronounce. It just looks awful. un-us-uh-bull. Y and W are common vowels in Welsh, they can be in English but you don't see them nearly as often. And listening to those weird place names in the US.... that definitely caught on from the UK. There's a bunch of equally stupid sounding places, I mean I had family in a place called Bishops Itchington for crying out loud lol
A common problem for anyone not from the Northampton area (that's the UK Northampton, not the ones in the US or Australia) is a local village called Cogenhoe. Despite the spelling, it is actually pronounced cook-know. Another local one that everyone else gets wrong is the nearby F1 race track at Silverstone. Most non-locals pronounce it as silver-stone but it should be silver-stun.
Since welsh has different letters in the alphabet, once you learn the sounds it makes way more sense, since i speak welsh its simple to me but to other people it’s difficult since the alphabet is different
Welsh place names are the hardest to pronounce if you don't know how the language works. For example, Ystradgynlais, which is a charming town in South Wales, is actually pronounced Ustrad-GUN-lice. Scotland has a similar collection of tricky-to-articulate handles for certain communities. My favourite is Hawick (Hoyk). I personally couldn't care less if foreigners - particularly those for whom English is their first language - pronounce British place names incorrectly. I am just grateful that there are so many people from outside this archipelago that are interested enough to try. Besides, it's not just foreigners that have difficulty in getting their tongues around UK towns and villages. How many English people know how to correctly utter Welsh, Gaelic and Cornish language names? Those Brits that complain about foreigners getting it wrong are probably the same pedants that balk at folks who put apostrophes in front of the 's' in plurals (e.g. 'car's for sale'). Thanks, Innocent American, for your reaction to another characteristically brilliantly executed video from Jay Foreman.
My favourite wtf is Alnwick, which is pronounced Annick. Theat's the place where the company "House of Hardy" has its residence. Great fishing gear, if you're interested.
Irish only has 21 letters. It was only formally written down by the Catholic Church in the 11th Century. Names were descriptive. Ogham was lines carved onto stone. I grew up on the North side of the Town of the Ford of the Hurdles. The south side is called the Black Pool. I am a Dubliner. The Irish is Baile Atha Cliath, translation The Town of The Ford of the Hurdles. An Dubh Linn, The Black Pool, became Dublin in English. Names change over time.
Pre-covid I volunteered at my local Record Office to study and enter into a database Staffordshire place names. This is an never-ending study but it did teach me that a name admittedly a small area can change in name in relative short period. E.g. a place called 'White Pump House' within 50 years had lost the 'white' prefix to simply become Pumphouse'. Though not in my area but I did find it funny Nottingham was originally called Snottingham after a local leader called 'Snot' (its true) but over time the 'S' was dropped perhaps gratefully for us Brits.
Persistence exists not only in place names but in man-made artifacts. A program on aerial archeology showed a view of the Vale of York. Straight north and south ran the old Roman road (now the A1) across the landscape. It cut through field boundaries which were obviously originally parts of the same field. The patterns of land use which pre-dated the Romans had survived to the present day.
Its worth noting as well that a lot of English surnames are connected to places too. You can map them, and you will find they are most common in an area a little way away from the place that inspired the name. The meaning of say Thomas Grimsby, would be Thomas from Grimsby, so there is no point using the name in Grimsby, but in a village 20 miles away he would probably be the only one. My name Hallam is historically the area around Sheffield, Hallamshire, but it is a name common in Nottinghsmshire and Derbyshire, to the south of there, which is where my Hallam ancestors lived for hundreds of years. As random examples of how American places got there Hallam Pensylvania was named after Hallamshire as that was where the local magistrate was from, but Hallam Nebraska was the result of a transcription error, the Swiss founder had wanted it to be called it after his home town of Hallau.
There are so many strange names in the UK: Cockermouth (Cumbria), Penistone (S Yorks), Tw*tt (Orkney) - then there are those that are difficult to pronounce Torpenhow (Tro - pen - ah, Cumbria), Kirkcudbright (Kerr - koo - bree, Dumfries, Scotland) - then just some strange ones like Ugley (where there might be a branch of the Ugley Women's Institute).
There are villages near me named Cogenhoe (pronounced cook-no) and Bozeat (pronounced Bo-shjut). Pretty much only us locals pronounce them correctly. The village right next to my home town is called Irchester because it was a Roman settlement originally. We also had Danelaw here, so there is a district of another town near here that is called Danesholm.
I used to live in Marylebone. Pronounced "Marla-bun". I used to walk east to get to Holborn, pronounced "Hoe-bun". Often I headed south to South Kensington, pronounced "South Ken" (OK, an abbreviation but it's rare to hear someone say the "ington"). Weird placename pronunciations are a good way to spot outsiders, to the extent that in WW2 certain placenames were used to test for spies. But not very relevant when you live in London because most people are visitors, and even the residents are mostly transient.
I have lived in UK 38 years and I have no idea how to pronounce half the place names in this crazy country, it literally required Wikipedia search for each one, but I love it
I am from a city called Sheffield, the name has undergone many pronunciations depending on who said it, due to people not being able to read and write in the times pre dating the Normans people called a town by what they spoke, Sheffield was referred to as ESCAFELD! but esca was pronounced esh and when said quickly and in the saxon/norman old english accent sounded like sheff. Later on after the norman conquest the cities name took root as Sheffield, Sheaf being the river that the town is on and feld being the word for clearing by the river so SHEAFFELD, At some point the letter A was dropped from sheaf and it became Sheffield.
I love it when things like that happen. There are two villages called Rock and Stone near me, and I've always thought they should try and twin with Boulder, Colorado.
I'm from a town called Loughborough, which is in Leicestershire.. I now live in a place called Cleckheaton and have lives in Thurmaston, Swindon, Dover and the world famous Melton Mowbray..
They mentioned that Alnwick is actually pronounced 'Annick'. They didn't add the quirk that it's named after the river Aln (pronounced 'Aln', NOT 'Ann', and near Alnmouth (pronounced 'Alnmuth'). My favourite one is a hamlet not too far away from Alnwick, called Featherstonehaugh. It's pronounced 'Fanshaw' or 'Fanshuf'
Places near me that are kinda weird: Little Hautbois - pronounced Little hobbis, Happisburgh - pronounced Haysburu, Costessey - pronounced Cossey. Something thats interesting is that places named after english towns and counties in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand tend to be pronounced kinda weird compared to the original. E.g. Norfolk, MA is pronounced Norfork whereas if you were from its namesake, Norfolk, England (as i am) you would pronounce it Nohfuk (im really bad at writing out how i pronounce things apparently). There's actually quite a few US places (particularly New England) that get their name from places in Norfolk as many early settlers in the region came from Norfolk (E.g. Couple of Yarmouths, Couple of Norfolks, Couple of Norwichs, Hingham, Some Eastons, Some Wells). Im pretty certain Abraham Lincolns however many greats-grandfather was from Norfolk in fact
I am from the town Dereham near Norwich (Narrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-idge if you wanna sound really authentic lol) and its not said quite as it is spelt. We say it as Dear-um or if you want to be really Norfolk Dare-um. We also have place names like Swaffham (Swoff-um), Wisbech (Wiz-beech), Reepham (Reef-um), Narborough (Nar-bruh), Great Yarmouth (Great Yar-muth) and Wymondham (Wind-um). Hunstanton and Kings Lynn are pretty straight forward. Fun fact about the counties of Norfolk (where I am) and Suffolk (Ed Sheeran is from there) is they originally meant North Folk (north people) and South Folk (south people). We make up the ass shape of the country. 😀
Ultimate test is Loughborough Ough can be: Ow like now (as in drought) Ohw like low (though) Oo like too (through) Uff like tuff (rough) Or as in thought Off as in cough Uh as in thorough And theres 2 "Ough" in the word giving a total 7^2 = 49 different possible combinations of the "ough" sounds to guess from ;)
i'm from the exeter area (roman settlement) and there's still a lot of roman culture left here today. we still have the roman wall and some parts of the castles and settlements. many things around here will use 'isca' in their name which was the roman's name for exeter. it's often easy to figure out tourists from pronunciations, teignmouth is a common one people get wrong when they come down here (pronounced more like 'tin' then a weird in-between of 'moth' and 'mouth' more like 'muf').
so apparently a diverse settlement and language of Britain led to a wide array and localized way of saying and spelling things. Apparently the arrival of the printing press suddenly put all of thees different ways to say and spell things at odds. In some cases a spelling was retained while the pronunciation from other larger regions may dominate, and vice versa. Hence the huge disconnect. I understand this directly relates to American pronunciation, especially 'A' 'ah' versus 'ay'. I am pretty sure the Spanish influence further shifted Americish, and resulted in the loss of 'u' in many words like colour. Dunno, I'm no expert, but I loved encountering the Apotheek in Netherlands... reminding me we all have a little Dutch and German in the mix too
The school I went to had Welsh roots that they were very proud of, so classrooms were all named after places in Wales. My first year homeroom was called Clwyd (pronounced kloo-ud). In most welsh words a w makes an oo sound and y makes an uh sound. They also have a sound written as LL that isn't in English so you just have to learn how to pronounce it by listening and imitating.
Hmm, Welsh vowels have variations but yes w is a vowel...Clwyd is more accurately Kloo-id so you were almost there(Welsh but brought up primarily with English, but all 4 of my children have gone to Welsh speaking schools and are all fully bilingual but 1st language Welsh)
@@andrewphillips3973 thanks! Yeah, my school was set up by welsh business men living in London back in like the 1700s or something because at the time they were not allowed to send their kids to the local schools, or so I heard. By the time I attended the school wasn't run by Welsh people, but was kind of over enthusiastic about their roots. All the classrooms were named for places in Wales, we sang the wish national anthem (with terrible pronunciation XD) at school events, and on St David's day we were taken out of lessons to play a load of Welsh themed games.
It's still nice to hear :) Welsh looks horrendous to read initially but once you understand the basic sounds(ie have a basic understanding of the alphabet) it's largely say what you see....very few of the "special rules" that English has thousands of 😆 just wish I'd had more of an opportunity as a kid to develop my Welsh early. Paid the favour forward to my kids though...and now they get to talk about me and the missus behind our backs out loud without us understanding 🙄
Ynysybwl I believe is Welsh for island pool, or a place originally built on an island in a lake for defensive reasons. Ynys means island, like with Ynys Mon, which is the big island immediately off the north coast of Wales which the Roman army sacked as it was the centre of Celtic Druidism and providing co-ordination and religious inspiration for the tribal resistance to Roman conquest. Welsh uses y and w as vowels, with y being an "uh" or an "ih" rather than an "ee", and w being an "oo", as in "ooh, that's odd". The Celts across Europe often built artificial islands in lakes for defense, as well as hillforts on hills, which is the origin of the placename element -dun. Romans called them -dunum, like Camulodunum, which was a tribal capital before their conquest. Anglo-saxons knocked the latin -um off the end, leaving -duns on the map, including Dunbarton in southern Scotland, which was once the Dun (hillfort) of the Britons which held out against the Scottish invasion from northern Ireland. There is no relationship between -dun and -tun or -ton. -tuns and-tons come from Anglo-Saxon for a village and of course is the origin of the modern word "town".
I live near Warwick (pronounced 'worrick'). As the video says, on the 'wick' part, the 'W' is silent. This is not so with Lerwick in Scotland which is prounced 'lerrWick'. Easy, huh?
You should also look into all the "rude" place names in the UK. A few that spring to mind are Cockfosters, Three Holes, and Grope Lane for a bit of an example.
@@Amandoop I'm fairly sure there was an original in Bristol, the obvious one being in London but I forget where. Perhaps they were quite common where a certain professional service was offered.
There are two towns called Hollywood that I can think of in the UK but it turns out that the most famous Hollywood, the one in California, was just named because the founder of the town liked it.
English and British accents and place names, are the living history of our country. My heritage is old norse Viking. I only know that, because I took a DNA test a few years back and that's what it said...Lol. It fits in to the history of my local area. English and British culture is a culture forged through centuries of brutal warfare unfortunately. But still I'm proud to be English if I had the chance to change it, I wouldn't.
"Frome" is easy. Most "ome" words were pronounced "oom" in Medieval times. Even Rome was Room. Scone in Scotland was "Scoon", and still is. The small cake of the same name is however "scon", with the short forward 'o', not "scone", or "scoon". I live in Bearsden, which is pronounced exactly as it's written, but with equal strength on the two syllables. The next town up the road, just a mile or two away, is "Milngavie" which is, notoriously, "Mulguy".
I live in Telford. It's not after a ford or anywhere local. It's a new town only been in existence for 50 years. Named after Thomas Telford a famous Scottish civil engineer.
I’ve had people in the uk not only pronounce where I’m from, (Gillingham, Kent, pronounced like the name Jill,)wrong but after researching the other town with identical spelling (Gillingham, Dorset, pronounced like fish gills ) argue with me about the pronunciation.
As a Do'set lad it's gill in Gillingham. It's also pronounced like that for the placename in Norfolk. As all three place names come from the same root - homestead of Gylla's people/family - I would guess it comes down to local dialect.
Walking around towns and cities in the UK can be a great history lesson. Especially what most people refer to as London as many streets haven't changed their names or coarse for centuries and the street names tell you what sort of people or businesses occupied that geographical area. I say what people refer to as London as London is actually a conurbation made up of lots of towns and villages now joined together. The actual city of London is only 1.1 Sq Miles. For example Scotland yard (known perhaps historically for London Police HQ ) was land given to the scottish king so he had some where to stay when he came to London. Cheapside , Cheap comes from an old word for market, Fleet street known back in the day for it newspaper offices is named after the river Fleet which was covered over and therefore became one of London many hidden underground rivers which is still under large sections of Fleet street. Just 5 minutes walking around London just looking at street names reveals centuries of interesting history. Downing street is a bit boring by-the-way as it was named after the person who developed it George Downing back in the 1600's. Nine Elms Lane where the new US embassy is in London was named, yes you've guess it, after a row of trees that existed along the lane which probaly dates back originally to the 1200's.
It kind of works in the USA. I was in South Dakota and passed a sign for Tabor, which I knew was a place in The Czech Republic, so I asked a local if the place was settled by Czech immigrants. They were a little taken aback and confirmed it was.
Strong connections to the Hussites I believe? There’s Bala Cynwyd in Philadelphia (or just outside I suppose) but they pronounce the ‘y’ in Cynwyd back-to-front (compared to the actual Welsh)
My part of England has an awful lot of 'Ayot' in place names including Ayot St Laurence, home of a great pub and George Bernard Shaw's house. Ayot sadly just means 'gap' of some Anglo-Saxon or other.
Welsh place names are easy to pronounce once you have a grip on the Welsh alphabet as Welsh is a phonetic language. The main differences are that y and w are vowels in Welsh, dd is a soft ‘th’ sound and ll is also one letter but I can’t describe how to pronounce it! 😅
It's one of the reasons I'm fascinated with place names and have a book describing the etymology in the car - most describe the area and possibly the 1st person to find/conquer it (as they mentioned in the Map Men video)
They are hard to pronounce because in the distant past they were called these names , the easiest example is london , which used to be called lundenne or other similar variations , the learned may have changed the spelling but people just called it it's original name . Viking were raiders only , the people that fought over the land were in most part Danes , England was very near to being Daneland
As someone from Wales, I can't pronounce half of the weird English place names. Then again, it's natural for me to be able to pronounce the Welsh names without having to think.
I lived in Wales for three years and was surprised my Welsh bestie with some dialect as certain word I said derived from the Welsh and I had no idea! But only really managed to learn 4 words while I lived there.
being a Brit i apologise, we make rules in language and then change the rules... great upload, i learned things there, and i have lived all my 56 years in the UK
Interestingly, a lot of names for rivers, mountains and other static landmarks and landscapes in Europe are based on old Celtic names that have survived in use way past the time the Celts have stopped being a dominant force in mainland Europe - this was before the Roman empire. Another source of such names were Proto-Slavic and Proto-Germanic languages in the more eastern and northern areas.
You said: "it's a very touchy subject to British people" Me thinking about what you just said: "Has he ever been to a small town anywhere in the US with either a name that looks like another city's name or a name with lots of letters that you're not sure how it's even pronounced and mispronounced the town's name to the locals while getting gas or stopping for something to eat while traveling? It's a touchy subject to the American people living in those towns, too." I live in Oklahoma and the two most common names that get mispronounced by folks not local to Oklahoma are: Miami and Prague. Miami is where the Miami tribe is located and has its tribal headquarters. If you pronounce this town's name like the city in Florida, the locals will definitely correct you.....especially those from the very Native American tribe both the town and the city in Florida are named after. (The town is pronounced M-eye-am-uh). Prague is actually interesting as it was founded by Czech immigrants to the US. They very intentionally named the city after the famous Czech city, but didn't want to directly copy it so changed the pronunciation of their town. While the locals might not get as upset with you for mispronouncing the town's name as the folks in Miami, Oklahoma will, they'll still correct you. (The town is pronounced Pr-ay-g). An example of a difficult town name with lots of letters a person isn't sure how to pronounce is Ouachita, Oklahoma. The locals there have definitely heard so many different pronunciations by people not from Oklahoma that it's almost like a game whenever they see an unfamiliar face to ask the person if they can pronounce the name of the town their in. (The town's name is pronounce W-ah-sh-uh-t-uh). Even a town in Oklahoma founded by my maternal great uncle and named after him (like most US towns, it's name is derived from the founder's or prominent person's surname) often gets mispronounced since the pronunciation of the name change over time by the family itself: Hartshorne, Oklahoma. I've met people with a similar family name: Hartshorn, who pronounce the town as "H-ar-t-s-h-or-n", but it's pronounced "H-ar-t-sh-or-n which is how my mom's dad's family pronounced it starting in the late 19th century to differentiate themselves from those who spelled the name without the -e at the end (which according to my grandfather the family felt was disrespectful to their long ago ancestors who had come to America from the village of Hartshorne, England which was settled by continental-german Saxons that helped repel Viking invasions and had been granted the land the village is at as a gift of appreciation for their help). While Hooker, Oklahoma is a strange name (it's named after a person whose last name was Hooker), I haven't ever heard anyone mispronounce it. A fun unincorporated town name in Oklahoma is Monkey Island. It's a community located along Grand Lake O' The Cherokees in eastern Oklahoma. It's technically an island in the lake as there's a small river and then a canal built between the river and the lake and the land there became an island. It's mostly got retired people and is a touristy place where you can rent cabins, boats, etc. I actually hadn't ever heard of it until I was working at a big box store as a cashier and a lady came in to purchase some medicine and the register said I needed to input her birthday and ID number so I asked for her ID and saw that it said she lived in Monkey Island, Oklahoma. To be fair, there's a Disney, Oklahoma (yes the city is named after a family member who settled it that's indirectly linked to the famous DIsney), but it's also along Grand Lake O' The Cherokees and is similar these days to Monkey Island (which is only a few miles from it). In fact, my niece's dad's family used to spend every July 4th there and they'd rent out a big boat and they'd watch the fireworks shows from each of the small towns along the shores of the lake. Great video! I enjoy Jay Foreman's videos, especially the Map Men videos.
We get it too. I used to live in Brighton, and about 3 miles from the centre there's a little town called Moulscoombe, which I was corrected on by a local to pronouce properly as Moulskum.
There's Shrewsbury that is pronounced differently depending on which side of the City's river you live on... It's either Shroos - bury (sounds like OOH) or Shroh's -bury (sounds like throw)
Shrewsbury is my home town - I've always pronounced it to sound like 'throw' - and you're right, it's often said that it 'depends on which side of the river one is from', which, I think, is a polite way of 'agreeing to differ', lol 😉 But in saying that, I must beg to differ on one point - Shrewsbury is not a city, although it does have a cathedral - the Catholic Cathedral on Town Walls. I understand that an application was made for 'city status' at one point - I wasn't sorry when it was rejected in favour of somewhere else - I love the character of Shrewsbury as a Market Town, and the County Town.
We also like to catch people out with place names spelt the same but pronounced differently. For example Gillingham Kent is, JILLING UM. Gillingham Dorset is, GILLING UM. Or Leigh in Kent is Li. Leigh On Sea is LEE On Sea. Or impossible if you are not local. Trottiscliffe pronounced TROZLEE.
I havent started the cideo yet but Im from Middlesbrough. We pronounce it Middles-Burra and everyone else says Middles-Burrow. Theres also a namesake in the US. Miiddlesboro Kentucky. We call our Football team Boro.
Most place names pre-date the great vowel shift that was almost complete by the time of Shakespeare, most people going back in a time machine would not be able to communicate with people speaking earlier versions of English.
Great to see Keynsham on their list... Cain shum - is how we locals pronounce it ! Funniest place in the UK that springs to mind is Shitterton - no lie, honest !
