Prompted by this post by Si Amigo:
I smiled because a few weeks ago I went with my family to the Bob Evans farm in Rio Grande (Rye-O Grand), OH.
Also, I used to leave pretty close to Papillion (pap-ill-yon) in Nebraska.
What are some others?
Calais, ME (pronounced Callous)
Well, they didn’t add that Bellfontaine, Ohio, is pronounced Bell-Fountain.
Cairo (Kay-roe), Illinois.
Arab (Ay-rab), Alabama (actually butchered from “Arad”, the town founder’s name).
There’s a San Jose in Illinois, and it’s a very small town.
I was made fun of when I saw the sign and pronounced it correctly.
“You idiot, it’s San Joe’s!”
Central Kentucky has a few of these. There’s Versailles (ver-sales) and Athens (ay-thens) in the Lexington area.
We’ve got a Beaufort (Bewe-furt) here in South Carolina.
There’s also Des Plaines, IL…
“Dez Planes”
Also in SC, there’s also a community “Monticello” pronounced “mon-ti-SEL-lo,” and Lancaster pronounced “LANK-uh-ster” instead of “LAN-CAS-ter.”
I was going to say that! My mom, when she and my dad were young preachers in the area, took it upon herself to try to correct the locals. They didn’t care for it.
Ohio is full of them. Lima, Toledo, the aforementioned Rio Grande and Bellfontaine, and I’m sure tons I’m forgetting.
Versailles/North Versailles PA – pronounced by locals “ver - sails”
DuBois PA - pronounced by locals as “Do boys”
I’m definitely not a prescriptivist about local names. I firmly believe there is no “wrong” local name. If the town is spelled “New York”, and the locals want to pronounce it “Atlantic City”, then that’s the proper pronunciation.
That said, isn’t “LANK-uh-ster” the “proper British” pronunciation?
Milan, PA (pronounced MYE-lun.)
Verdi, NV (pronounced VUR-dye.)
Los Angeles is of course classic. So is Detroit.
We have the Thames river, here in CT. Pronounced “Thaims”.
El Dorado, Arkansas, pronounced El Doh-ray-doh. They have a Monticello pronounced Monti-Sello.
Maybe so. If that’s the case, it’s the PA town that’s pronounced “differently.” I just didn’t see how SC would be more likely to get it “right.”
Belle Fourche, South Dakota, pronounced Bell Foosh.
Of course both the Pennsylvania and South Carolina towns pronounce their own names correctly.
In places where more than half the people actually speak the lanugage of the name, sometimes it’s useful to “butcher.” We do that here with the neighborhood of Los Feliz, because if someone says, “Vete a los feliz” [los fei 'lis], one may not know if they’re talking about some people or the place. So even Spanish speakers will often corrupt the pronunciation to make themselves clear, and say “vete a [los 'fi lis].”