List of places in England with counterintuitive pronunciations: M–Z

This is a sublist of List of names in English with counterintuitive pronunciations.

Pronunciations for the following common suffixes are regular pronunciations, despite being counterintuitive at first glance:

Pronunciation of the following common prefix is variable depending on dialect:

  • Al- /ˈɒl, ˈɔːl/

Place names in England

M

N

Norwich is a cathedral city of more than 140,000 people and the county town of Norfolk which has more than 850,000 inhabitants.

O

P

Q

R

S

Southwell Minster is a cathedral in England, unusually in a village. Its diocese serves Nottinghamshire. County towns Salisbury (as in Salisbury Cathedral and Lord Salisbury, multiple-term Prime Minister) and Shrewsbury, with its public school and retained early medieval Abbey church (through the English Reformation under the Tudor period) fall in this list always and as to one variant respectively.

T

The name of the diminished market town of Dorchester on Thames indicates its founding in Roman Britain. It occupies the land projecting at the confluence of the rivers Thames and Thame which are elisions of the Roman name for the main river and as with the town of Thame take their t sound from the Tamesis. All have phonetically shifted away from a short 'a' each to a different longer different vowel in the case of the main river: /tɛmz/ ( listen).
Theobald's Road in London.

U

V

W

Worcester is a cathedral city of more than 100,000 people and the county town of Worcestershire which has more than 550,000 inhabitants.

Y

Z

See also

Notes and references

Notes
  1. ↑ Accordingly: Southwick, Hampshire - /ˈsʌðɪk/
    Anomalies: Southwick, West Sussex is pronounced /ˈsaʊθwɪk/, like Painswick, Gloucestershire, Prestwick and Hardwick as well as Pickwick a former village in Wiltshire through which the novel The Pickwick Papers got its title, but these by population represent a very small minority.
  2. ↑ Wells also lists /ˈmærɪbən/ but that is obsolete.
  3. ↑ Like Berwick, the fact of the "r" being pronounced with the last syllable negates an intuitive interpretation. Many people outside of its area/history would have a very low chance of guessing this.
  4. ↑ Sometimes intuitive also.
  5. ↑ Can be taken as a group with Beaminster, Leamington and Yeavering
  6. ↑ cf. St Ives in Cornwall as well as Cambridgeshire and Dorset /sənt ˈaɪvz/
  7. ↑ Or /ˈzɔːzbəri/ occasional, traditional, informal pronunciation
  8. ↑ Many more variants are researchable, rarer, down to /sluːwit/ and /slaʊwit/
  9. ↑ locally and in some dialects ˈsʌvək
  10. ↑ Racecourse commentators always use the shorter form rather than the longer.
  11. ↑ cf. Thames River (Connecticut) pronounced /ˈθeɪmz/
  12. ↑ The family name Tideswell locally and in its senior branch pronounced /ˈtɪdzə/, e.g. 4crests.com Coat of Arms and A dictionary of English surnames Percy Hide Reaney & Richard Middlewood Wilson
  13. ↑ The source notes only the BBC uses /ˈtɒdmɔːrdən/
  14. ↑ likewise in road names and Warwickshire
  15. ↑ Regional pronunciation.
References
  1. ↑ e.g. City of Leicester which follows e.g. Towcester, Rocester and Alcester – /ˈɒlstər/ or /ˈɔːlstər/
  2. ↑ Well-known, large examples are Woolwich and West Bromwich cf. Nantwich and Droitwich Spa
  3. ↑ e.g. Smethwick, Chiswick and Flitwick
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Wells, John C. (2000). Longman Pronunciation Dictionary. 2nd ed. Longman. ISBN 0-582-36468-X.
  5. ↑ Mildenhall audio pronunciation
  6. ↑ Olney Town Council Official Guide
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Pronouncing British Placenames at BBC's Edited Guide Entry h2g2 site
  8. 1 2 Sangster, Catherine; Olausson, Lena (2006). Oxford BBC guide to pronunciation. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. p. 300. ISBN 0-19-280710-2. This is correct for the Plaistows in London and West Sussex.
  9. ↑ Roland Gant (1980). Dorset Villages. Robert Hale Ltd. p. 102. ISBN 0 7091 8135 3.
  10. ↑ St. Clair Baddeley, W. (1913). Gloucestershire Place-Names. Gloucester: John Bellows. pp. 142–143. Retrieved 15 January 2015.
  11. ↑ "the cotswolds: snowshill manor". suziebeezieland. Archived from the original on 2 April 2015. Retrieved 15 January 2015.
  12. ↑ "Hidden London - Pronunciation". Hidden London. Retrieved 3 January 2015.
  13. ↑ "See entry for 25th April". Phon.ucl.ac.uk. Retrieved 2012-10-09.
  14. ↑ William Farrer & J. Brownbill (editors) (1907). "Townships: Wavertree". A History of the County of Lancaster: Volume 3. Institute of Historical Research. Retrieved 16 July 2011.

Further reading

  • G. M. Miller (editor) (1971). BBC pronouncing dictionary of British names. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-431125-2.
  • Ordnance Survey of Ireland (1989). Gazetteer of Ireland. Government Publications Office. ISBN 0-7076-0076-6.
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