Anything like Colquohoun?
I’m tempted to guess “Coburn”.
Unfortunately, all I have is Italian surnames, and they’re phonetic, so no go. If I were Welsh, now…then I’d have you all beat.
As for the OP, I knew someone named Voyvodich, and the first few times I spoke the name I pronounced it Voydovich. Eventually I got it right, but I’m betting that the politico (or someone earlier in his family) just decided to go with the flow, instead of constantly correcting people. (Of course, he could have gone all the way and changed the spelling, too.)
Featherstonehaugh is also pronounced by various branches of the family as Festonhay or Feerstonhaw.
And as for that silent 3, I have a friend whose name is Sus3an. Really! She’s a writer and her name regularly appears in print like that. And yes, the 3 is silent.
There’s a similar Medina in Ohio. Also Dubois (DU-boyss), Pennsylvania, and Versailles (ver-SAILS), Indiana.
Thus the old and incredibly lame even back then joke, “What’s Michael Jackson’s favorite Pennsylvania city?”
This happens a lot with place names. In San Diego, California there’s a street name that locals pronounce “gar-nette,” with the accent on the second syllable. The neighboring streets are Diamond and Emerald. Ask them how they pronounce the red stone that looks a bit like a ruby and they’d say “garnet,” accent on the first syllable. As my grandmother used to say, “You’ve got the accènt on the wrong syllàble.”
A friend, also from San Diego, got me thoroughly lost when he mangled the pronunciation of a Spanish name. I speak some Spanish, so I didn’t recognize the name on a road sign since my reading of it and his were completely different. Apparently, San Diegans have problems with names.
Ironically, Rodeo Drive in the Los Angeles, CA area preserves the Spanish pronunciation while it’s been completely changed when referring to good ol’ boy events involving horses, cows, and rope. (That last sentence looks more perverted than I thought it would.)
No doubt. One of the more famous thoroughfares in midtown Atlanta is “Ponce De Leon Avenue”. Locally it’s pronounced “Pawnse Dee Leon” and is often shortened to just “Ponce”, which rhymes with “sconce”, “taunts”, or “flaunts”.
I have a friend that moved to Atlanta with his new wife a couple of years back. I kept trying to correct her - inbetween fits of laughter - when she kept saying “Pawn-say Day Lyon” . Nothing screams “Damn Yankee” like asking for directions to [insert fake Spanish accent here] “101 Pawn-say Day Lyon Street” (not Ave.) when you should be asking for “101 Pawnse”.
There used to be a street (also in downtown Atlanta) called Houston Street, which was pronounced HOW-ston, which is the same way the street in NYC is pronounced, IIRC.
Of course, the ultimate Atlanta test for new weathermen and radio personalities is the small town of Dacula. It’s pronounced DUH-cula. It seems that new weathermen and DJs without exception pronounce it DAC-ula (as in “Count Dracula”, but without the R) and then get an avalanche of hate mail. You’d think they’d coach new people about that, but I think they don’t just for a good “inside” newsroom joke.
There’s a bunch of these in Illinois, as well. My personal favorite is Marseilles, pronounced “mar-sales” instead of “mar-say”. And Ohio? Cuyahoga = cahoga, among other egregious (pronounced “bad”) examples.
Really? I’m from Ohio and I’ve never heard that. The two versions I’ve heard are ki-a-HOG-a and ki-a-HOAG-a, and I can never remember which is correct or if both are.
It goes both ways in San Diego. San Diego and Los Angeles (and California, San Francisco, etc. etc.) are all Spanglish (mangled Spanish–this makes more sense than the ‘Spanish/English’ meaning–see the angl? Four letters from ‘mangle’ as opposed to three from ‘English’) in and of themselves–think about how Anglicized our pronunciations of those places are. San Diegans Anglicize a lot of their street-names and such, but not all–one popular tourist destination is the university neighborhood called La Jolla, which is officially pronounced as in Spanish, like ‘la hoya’. It’s tough not to break out laughing when the tourists come asking how to get to Luh Jahlah.
There are cities in Mexico with English names, such as Rocky Point. I wonder if they get Spanishized in their pronunciations over there?
Could be that I’ve always heard the river pronounced as you suggest, but the town pronounced as “Ca-hoga Falls” Or maybe it’s just a Pretenders thing…“from Seneca, to Cahoga (sic) Falls”. I used to live in Cleveland, and it was always “Cahoga Falls”…
Ravenna, though, always seems to be pronounced “Ravaaaaaa-nah”, in a nasal tone…
I was down there a few months ago, and I was told they pronounce it “Pawnse duh Leon,” long e in Leon. I can only imagine the look I gave my host.
And I forgot Illinois’ City of Destiny, Des Planes, which is pronounced as it’s spelled, but shouldn’t be. Oh, how I wish there was a town called “Dee Plane! Dee Plane!”
I worked with a guy who’s last name was Krch, pronounced Smith. Just kidding, but Krch, no vowel, odd.
And of course, don’t forget, Hele mei hoohiwahiwa ko maua la male 'ana.
In fact there is a marked tendency in multi-syllable English name to omit the middle syllables in pronunciation, hence:
Worcestershire
Leicester
Featherstonehaugh
Dalziel
Cholmondeley.
There is a technical name for the practice, which I cannot recall at the moment.
On a related note:
Guess where the large industrial town of Togliatti is situated.
No cheating now!
One of the more interesting phenomenon facing African-American children in the last 30 years or so is the naming traditions by young unwed urban mothers (although I’ve seen this practice among all socioeconomic backgrounds so take the “urban” thing lightly.) Basically you have a lot of young teenagers making up fanciful names with spellings that “look good” to their mothers cobbled with improbable pronounciations. Some work, some don’t.
Here are some first names of former students of mine just in the past three years.
Miprecious
Shaman
Shaniqah
LaTonia
Lita
Domin’eek
Davida
Chaison
Porshia
Lexius
Seanquettae
Shaniquia
D’Emon
I thought it was “coy-uh-hoag-uh”. That’s how Michael Stipe sings it in the R.E.M. song, anyway.
Not legally, I’d wager. I’m sure previous threada about wacky names have revelaed that the law (in the US?) limits names to letters only - no numbers or symbols.
A lively young damsel named Menzies
Inquired: “Do you know what this thenzies?”
Her aunt, with a gasp,
Replied: “It’s a wasp,
And you’re holding the end where the stenzies.”
Ohio also has a Berlin and a Milan, pronounced BER-lin and MI-lan.
La Jolla might not have so many problems is the founders had spelled the word correctly: La Joya.
If I saw the word “garnette,” I would also pronounce it gar-NET. The jewel is spelled garnet. Why add all the extra letters if your intention isn’t to change the pronunciation? Just founders’ stupidity, again?