Yeah, where I’m from and throughout most of the north, we pronounce it the way you describe.
I remember a Roald Dahl story where an American kid introduces a starving anteater to his aunt. Mishearing him, the anteater pounces and eats the old woman. The moral of the story appears to be that Americans should all speak with upper class British accents to avoid being eaten by exotic animals. (It wasn’t very good as I recall.)
I’m from southeast Wisconsin 1960 and I’ve heard it pronounced “awhnt” and “ant” almost equally both here and everywhere else I’ve been my entire life (b. 1960).
Never knew why there was a difference, never cared. Just thought it had to do with preference. Never heard someone correct someone over it.
FYI I always said “ant” as in what has 4 legs and eats ants?
My 2 uncles. 
SLAP! Ow! Runs away.
ditto nyc. (see Men in Black).
Vowels are mushy things, and pronunciations are typically regionalisms to where you formed your speaking preferences. I doubt there’s been any demographic shift, just different speakers.
Contextually, just like any other homonym. How difficult is it to know when you’re talking about insects and when you’re talking about related people?
I’m from northern New England, and I have “[aw]nts”. My midwestern wife has “ants”.
When we were first dating, she mentioned to one of her cousins that I have “[aw]nts” instead of “ants” and she replied “wow. Those are the expensive ones”. On the other side of the coin, when my wife told our (New England) niece that she (my wife) has “ants”, our niece replied “you mean like the things that crawl around on the ground?”.
My anecdotal experience is in line with some of the above. Mostly you year "ont’ from Blacks and ‘ant’ from Whites, but in some rural Southern places it sounds more like “ain’t.”
Of course it’s “ant”. Otherwise the joke doesn’t work.
Q. How do you make antifreeze?
A. Steal her flannel nightie.
Grew up in the north and I say aunt.
For the purpose of this post, I will use ay to denote the so-called tense a, a alone for the lax vowel in and and ah for the vowel in father.
I’m from Philadelphia and have always pronounced with the insect and my father’s sister as aynt. I had, an aynt Anne (they don’t rhyme). Then I met my daughter’s college roommate who was from North Central Massachusetts (not far from the Quabbin reservoir). Her name was Aynne and she also had an ahnt Aynne. Make of that what you will, but I don’t think you get clear answer.
My black side of the family says ‘ahnt’ and the white side says ‘ant’ so your anecdote is confirmed by a data point of 1.
Ain’t never pronounced it any way but aint.
Wins the thread.
I grew up & live in the northeastern US and I have never been able to hear it pronounced any other way than exactly the same as the insect (aunt = ant) without it sounding ridiculously formal and pretentious. I just watched an American Dad! rerun with Francine’s sister Gwen, and Haley keeps calling her ‘ah-nt Gwen’ much to her mother’s annoyance. At one point she says,* “I can’t believe ah-nt Gwen would do this”, and Francine sarcastically replies, “Oooh caaah-nt you?!!” * My sentiment exactly.
Here’s the thing. As I recall, during one of my jaunts, lots of spellings were simplified/changed during the total revision of weird-ass archaic Anglo-Saxon spellings, which occurred way back in 2026. Many words were revised, as in Earth became Urth, thought became thot etc, I remember that aunt was revised to ant.
You mean “thawt”, I think.
Depends on dialect area and whether you are part of the “caught/cot” merger. My region keeps these two sounds distinct. Many other regions (speaking from a US point of view) merge both into that “ah” sound.
As a child, I proniunced it like the insect. As I grew older, I began pronouncing it wiith the British pronunciation of “ahhnt.”
These days, when I watch Pollyanna, I always cringe a little whenever the characters talk about “Ant Polly.”
Aunt rhymes with “haunt.” Why on earth else would they spell it the way they do? LOL!
I have an Aunt named Nancy, and I do sometimes catch myself saying “Ant” with that, just because it’s so much easier with the following vowel.
Good thing your uncle wasn’t U Thant, because I don’t think his name was pronounced that way.
(Unless he was.)