Re: Surname Pronunciation

Kay Robinson wrote:
On Sat, 14 Mar 2009 15:00:33 -0000, "JFHH" <johnfhhgen@xxxxxxxxxx>
sharpened a new quill and scratched:

Hello kay
----- Original Message ----- From: "Kay Robinson" <Kay_Robinson@xxxxxxxxxxx>
SNIP<> I've always read this as you do, however, the makers of TV programmes
are notorious for inflicting their own pronunciation of even the
commonist names. The beeb is probably worse of these. They have
suddenly decided that Beswick is now to be pronounced as BesWick. When
I heard this I wondered how long before they'd change the town of
Keswick to KesWick, and sure enough it was heard on air last week. A
couple of months ago I heard Bacup pronounced Backup on the BBC news.
Maybe they're on a deliberate course of changing the English language
in an attempt to bring it in line with English as it is red by the
yoof of today.
Incidently, there is a name Toovey so it's quite possible that the
admiral was a Toovey.>
Kay
The BBC already seems to have successfully exterminated Sissiter [Cirencester], Haysbro [Happisburgh], Hunston [Hunstanton],
Wesley [Wellesley]
Its own "BBC Pronouncing Dictionary of British Names" gives Baykup for Bacup, Bessick for Beswick in Greater Manchester and Bezzick for Beswick in Humberside. It gives very wide range of choices for Uttoxeter, and both forms for Cirencester, Hunstanton, but only the old for Happisburgh.
BBC Wales also went through phase [perhaps they still do] of giving English placenames in Monmouthshire a Welsh pronunciation, even more bizarre when the English placename itself was an English approximate transliteration of the Welsh pronounciation.
Regards
John Henley


It makes me shudder, or should that be shadder, or shidder or even
shedder. There's a place called Tintwhistle in Derbyshire, the older
locals call in Tinsel, Tideswell is locally called Tidsul by many of
the farmers and there must be hundreds of such names pronounced
differently in local dialects now only used among the elderly who've
lived their entire lives there and had little or no schooling (or
should that be sculing, or even larnin) but the younger generations in
those locations don't use the old dialect anymore.

Maybe the beeb is trying to bring back all those old dialects which
may be considered twee, however, as they are always pointing out, we
are part of an entire world and if we confuse that world by insisting
that local dialects are to be used we'd be nothing more than a
laughing stock.

The "dialect" pronunciation may, in fact, be the correct one. For instance the WRY village currently called "Holme" has a dialect pronunciation with an "n" as the last consonant and the vowel sound more akin to "oy". The derivation is from the OE for holly as is "Hollin", a common place name element on both sides of the Pennines and the "n" is correct.

Does it matter? It certainly does for genealogists reading old documents. I've seen plenty of instances of "Slawit" and "Cawell" in PRs. Try locating those on the modern map.

--
Ian

Hotmail is for spammers. Real mail address is igoddard
at nildram co uk
.

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