In between snatches of holiday festivus errand-running, I spent some quality time re-reading Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather.
One thing about that book continues to elude me: what is the significance of Mr. Teatime’s name? He insists on having it prounced “Teh-ah-tim-eh”; almost everyone gets it wrong, and he leaps for joy when someone finally pronounces it right.
I can’t grok the significance of this point (assuming there is one) – I suppose it could be a case of mock pretentiousness, like the folks who pronounce “Target” (the store) as “Tar-jhee”, but I think there’s more to it than that… can someone clue me in?
I think it’s a reference to the De’ath family (not related (by blood) to Edward d’Eath), whose name is pronounced dee-ath but looks a hell of a lot like “death”.
I can’t really see the Throatwobbler Mangrove connection, as a name pronounced Teh-ah-tim-eh should indeed be spelled “Teatime”.
The British are famous for pronouncing names in a fashion that seems to have little relationship to how they actually spell them. There was a book, and later a movie starring George C. Scott and Kirk Douglas, by Phillip MacDonald titled The List Of Adrian Messenger., whose whole plot depended on this proclivity. The book and movie turned on the fact that the name Bruttenhlom was actually pronounced “broom”.
The Brits also pronounce Worcstershire as wooster and leicester as Lester. As long as they know what they’re talking about, I guess it doesn’t matter if Americans are baffled by all this. It might even be part of some conspiracy to keep the erstwhile colonials in their place.
The sort of names you’re talking about are largely the product of time: either they’ve retained their original (pre-modern English) pronunciation, or become fossilized into the fashion of a particular time, or simply become worn down in the mouths of generations.
Mr Teatime is a separate phenomenon, and as rjung guessed, it has to do with pretentiousness – or perhaps in his case, a determination to be taken seriously. His family has, in all probability, always pronounced the name as it looks as though it should be – he’s deliberately changed the pronunciation to make it less of a joke name. People do this in real life, but the only example I can think of at the moment is fictional: Hyacinth Bucket (pron. Bouquet) from the sitcom Keeping Up Appearances.
The most famous such joke, IMHO, was the W.C. Fields character in the BANK DICK, named Egbert Sousé. He keeps reminding people that his name is “Sou-say, with an accent grave over the e.” The obvious implication is that he’s been called “souse” (meaning drunk) so often, that he automatically tells people about the “accent grave over the e” as a running joke.
I know a family IRL named Pigott who insist that it’s Pie-gott.
Or to make it sound more hoity-toity. I’ve never seen any support for this, but from seeing/reading this kind of thing occasionally, I’ve drawn an inference that in the UK, sometimes people will insist on a pronunciation that makes their name sound more Norman-French (i.e., aristocratic) than Anglo-Saxon (not).
There is also the apocryphal tale, usually concerning an exchange between Jean Harlow and Greta Garbot but sometimes between other people with similar names. According to the story Harlow insisted on mispronouncing Garbot’s name with a hard "T’. At some function or other she introduced Garbot in that fashion, to which Garbot responded "Dear you have been mispronouncing my name. The “T” on the end is silent, just like in “Harlow”.
There’s a GQ thread on this subject, but quite aside from whether it actually exists in the real world (which I think it does, but I won’t go to any great lengths trying to prove), the idea of a name that is pronounced in a way other than that naturally parsed from its spelling is a popular comedy meme; often it’s because the name pronounced normally would be embarrasing, common-sounding or just mundane.
The most well-known example (in British comedy, at least) would be Hyacinth Bucket (‘it’s pronounced boo-kay’), but [url=“http://www.geocities.com/mmemym/bits1/fal0012.htm”]here’s an example by Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, and I do actually think the Pythons’s Throat Warbler Mangrove is a valid example.
IRL: A mate of mine used to work at the DHSS - one of the people signing on had the surname Hogsflesh, but insisted it was pronounced ‘ho-flay’ (to which my mate answered “I’m sorry sir, someone’s written ‘hogsflesh’ here, how did you say it should be spelt?”
As this is Cafe Society, I’ll merely ask if you’ve ever considered featuring in a self-made documentary about swimming across Boston Harbour wrapped in ten fathoms of anchor chain. :dubious:
Tony Pigott, the cricketer, pronounced it as “Pie-got”, but Lester Pigott, the tax-fiddling jockey, pronounced it as “Pig-ott”.