Awstin or Ostin

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Posted by herbert punter on 03/10/2020 21:08:50:

While we are on the subject of pronunciation, how should Tangye be pronounced?

Bert

Tang – ee

Gitta Tangye is the patron of the Birmingham and black Country Wildlife Trust where I used to work. She's the daughter of the last baronet.

Incidentally, she thought the factory was a horrible noisy, dirty place when shown it as a youngster!

Neil

[Mike PooleParticipant @mikepoole82104]

Nice to know I got the pronunciation correct

Mike

[herbert punterParticipant @herbertpunter99795]

Thanks for that, Neil. I thought that might be correct, but English names aren’t always pronounced how one would expect. Cholmondely, and Featherstonehaugh, for example.

Bert

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Posted by herbert punter on 04/10/2020 09:40:56:

… English names aren’t always pronounced how one would expect. Cholmondely, and Featherstonehaugh, for example.

Bert

All vanity. I knew a Mr de Ath, pronounced as if it were French. His grandad's surname was Death, as in funerals, which led to a lot of prejudice so he fixed that and became aristocratic by inserting a space.

Surnames took off in medieval times when they were needed to identify people paying Poll Tax, but turned out to be useful for many other purposes. Sudden rush to choose one, based on occupation (Smith, Tanner, Cooper, Clarke.), or relationships (Wilkinson, Davies, Jones), or location (Wood, Green, Marsh) or anything else handy that took head of household's fancy, including accepting what the neighbours called you! Death is one of several British surnames derived from morality plays. If your surname is Justice, Proud, Virtue, Folly, Syn, Good, Grace, Love, Peace, Boy or similar, a remote ancestor probably chose it after a boozy visit to an entertainment, and may have regretted it in the morning…

Dave

[Nick Clarke 3Participant @nickclarke3]

All vanity. I knew a Mr de Ath, pronounced as if it were French. His grandad's surname was Death, as in funerals, which led to a lot of prejudice so he fixed that and became aristocratic by inserting a space.

One of the middle names of Dorothy L Sayers's detective Lord Peter Wimsey, pronounced as your friend did, and the other way as the pseudonym he adopted to become the suspicious Death Breedon in her book 'Murder must advertise'

[Howard LewisParticipant @howardlewis46836]

Derek Tangye, a descendant of the company that made the hydraulic jacks that launched the Great Eastern, always pronounced his surname as Neil said, Tang – ee.

The company adverts read " We launched the Great Eastern, It launched us"

The company lived on, post WW 2 as Epco-Tangye, still making hydraulic jacks.

There is a large single cylinder Tangye oil engine, now rotated by an electric motor, at The WaterWorks Museum in Hereford.

(Sadly it ceased running under its own power because one the crank webs cracked; for the second time )

Howard

[Mike PooleParticipant @mikepoole82104]

Of course we must not forget Hyacinth Bucket and the Scots like to trip us up with Dalziel and Menzies.

 

Mike

Edited By Mike Poole on 04/10/2020 15:53:58

[Martin KyteParticipant @martinkyte99762]

Posted by herbert punter on 04/10/2020 09:40:56:

Thanks for that, Neil. I thought that might be correct, but English names aren’t always pronounced how one would expect. Cholmondely, and Featherstonehaugh, for example.

Bert

Come on, no one with a name like that is ever going to talk normally so how could you tell!!

Seriously most odd names (people and places) have been successively mangled buy the conversion of foreign words into middle english and subsequently re-spelt on several occasions. Not quite as obscuring as passing the word through an enigma machine but not too far off.

:O)

Martin

[Grindstone CowboyParticipant @grindstonecowboy]

Posted by Nick Clarke 3 on 04/10/2020 14:46:27:

All vanity. I knew a Mr de Ath, pronounced as if it were French.

A (probably apocryphal) story I recall from a copy of Reader's Digest concerned a member of the Royal Flying Corps in WW1, whose surname D'eath was considered by his superiors to be unsettling for his comrades. So they asked him to start using his mother's maiden name, which was a great idea until they realised they now had a Rigger Mortice instead…

Rob

Edited By Grindstone Cowboy on 04/10/2020 16:19:19

[Grindstone CowboyParticipant @grindstonecowboy]

Slightly off-topic, but there's a short film about Austins showing on the Talking Pictures TV channel (Freeview 81 in the UK) at 9:55am on Tuesday 6th October.

Rob

[Anthony KnightsParticipant @anthonyknights16741]

Two place names from East Anglia. Wymondham and Happisburgh. I leave it to you to work out the correct pronunciation.

[Mick B1Participant @mickb1]

Surely, most of us have heard of the US travellers in the English Midlands who were looking for a train to Loogaborooga?

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

JS was from Ilkeston, that's a good one for spotting in-comers

Neil

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