British place names can be tricky to pronounce.
Take this place. Looks simple, but what if we told you it was pronounced Grrrrrrrrrrr-immeeeeeee-SSSS-zzzzz-P?
We'd be lying, it's Grimsby.
But other places can be genuinely fiddly for foreigners.
And tourists who get it wrong risk being imprisoned, or killed.
In today's programme, we're going to ask why British place names are so hard to pronounce...
- Is there an "and" coming? - No, I'm done.
Welcome to Map Men.
- We're the men - And here's the map.
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There are difficult-to-pronounce place names all over the world.
California has Zzyzx, Slovenia has Ptuj, Greenland has...
Qeqertarsuatsiaat
Even Welsh natives struggle with this one...
And tonight we can expect to see heavy showers spreading from the west into...
...Wales.
But deliberately hard-to-pronounce names invented for promotional purposes like
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch aside
- Showoff. - British place names cause more trouble than most
because they often look straightforward, but contain nonsensical phonetic traps that are impossible to predict.
Try this one.
Go on, say it out loud, in your room or on your train.
- Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! - Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!
Wrong! It's not "froam"!
F-R-O-M-E, it should be blitheringly obvious, is pronounced "Froom".
But if you did say "froam", don't worry, you're in good company.
Frome is officially the most mispronounced place name in Britain, and that's according to a proper survey.
Excuse me, could you mispronounce Frome for me?
- Portsmouth. - That'll do.
There's nothing more fun than laughing at tourists who don't know how to say something properly simply because
they're from a different country and could never reasonably be expected to have predicted a local pronunciation
that contradicts the basic rules of language.
So, we've created the perfect travel agent's itinerary for maximising tourist humiliation across the country.
- Starting in Beaulieu... - Byoo Lee
- Head over to Rampisham - Ransom
- Then down to Mousehole - Mowzell
- Next, travel north up to Towcester - Toaster
- then a quick jaunt to Gotham - Goat'em
- followed by a stop in Quernmore - Kwormer
- before finishing up in Alnwick - Annick, which is near Newcastle.
Or, as the people from the city itself say, New Cassel.
When will they learn?
As you can hear, no letter in the English alphabet is safe from being pronounced any of dozens of different ways.
including, not at all.
Thankfully, there are some general rules you can stick to,
and because we're nice, we'll help the un-British amongst you through a couple of basics.
"cester" is pronounced "ster"
Leicester, Worcester, Gloucester.
W, at the start of the final syllable, is silent.
Norwich, Berwick, Southwark.
"E-R" is pronounced "ar"
Berkshire, Clerkenwell, Hertfordshire
But before you get too reassured, for every rule in the English language, there are always exceptions,
such as the "cester" in...
Cirencester
The W in...
Sandwich
And the "er" sound in...
Ergh, this is disgusting.
Oh sorry, Berkhamsted.
which is in Hertfordshire.
The only way to be absolutely sure of pronouncing British place names correctly
is to live here long enough to learn every single one of them one at a time. Sorry.
So who were the complete 'ankers that invented these rules?
It's time for an English lesson.
To make an English language, you start with a base of Germanic Anglo-Saxon,
mix in a healthy dash of Old Norse,
a huge dollop of Norman French,
and just a barely detectable hint of Celtic. Trust me, it'll make all the difference.
Stir it up for hundreds of years until the vowels really start to shift, and then...
English.
Excitingly, by looking at a map of Britain today, we can clearly see which invaders influenced our language where
by plotting the origins of British place names.
Hooraaay!
This marvellous, messy, multicoloured map shows which languages different British place names belong to
and is a living history of our early settlers and subsequent invaders.
The oldest place names here are of Celtic origin.
This is where you'll find all the place names with words like Tre, Loch, Bryn and Aber.
Such as Aberystwyth, meaning the mouth - Aber - of the river Ystwyth.
which, coincidentally is exactly where we find Aberystwyth today.
Celtic languages were once spoken all across the British Isles, but are now reduced to a small minority of mountain-dwellers.
And that's because low-lying middle-England Brits turned out to be more worse at resisting invading armies.
First up were the Romans who brought in Britain's Latin influences
- Like the rumba? - No, like boring Latin.
Anywhere that ends in caster, cester, chester, or xeter was a Roman fort
from the Latin word "castra" meaning Roman fort.
But the Romans didn't stay long.
So although their naming system was long lasting, the actual names they used weren't.
which is perhaps unsurprising when we learn they used names like Castra Exploratorum and Belgic Oppidum
which was sensibly renamed Braintree.
Next, in light pink, we have the biggest group, Germanic Anglo-Saxon.
Any place containing the words ham, hurst, ley, bury, ford, port, mere, stead, ton, stow, wick, wich, or mere
are of good old Anglo-Saxon origin, and massively dominate southern England.
Like Buckingham.
Or, a low lying area of land, belong... ing, to an Anglo-Saxon called Bucca.
Perhaps the most upheavalling thing to happen to Britain's place names was the Vikings
who swept in from Scandinavia in the 9th century committing brutal crimes including rape, pillage,
and the renaming of small to medium-sized settlements.
You can tell a place was named by the Vikings if it ends in thwaite, thorp, kirk, or by.
Such as our old friend Grimsby, named after an important Viking called Grim famed for his infectious positive energy
Grimsby literally means "Grim's village".
Really?!
We're all familiar with these common settlement suffixes, but what's so striking is
how clearly this map of Viking place names reflects the extent of the Viking invasions.
You can practically see the exact location of the Danelaw, dividing Viking and Anglo-Saxon England
without needing to draw it on with thick red pen.
Following all these invasions, Britain was littered with place names that originated in different languages and accents
But the final thing that would make its place names truly unpronounceable, was time.
Over hundreds of years, locals who were too busy to pronounce all the syllables in "cester"
reduced it to "ster" to save time. But they couldn't read or write, so the spelling stayed the same.
And while the English language has continued to gradually evolve, our place names haven't.
Resulting in a language landscape littered with phonetic booby traps.
But what about Frome?
Which linguistic group is responsible for Britain's so-called hardest place name?
Unusually for a place name in England, Frome is from a surviving Celtic word - Frama - which means fair, fine, or brisk.
Probably describing the flow of its lovely river.
It's not really surprising that the oldest language in these islands is the one that's drifted the furthest from pronounceability.
So don't forget to join us for the next episode of Map Men...
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