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From: deb5@ellis.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Re: Featherstonehaugh
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References: <4ndlgh$osh@nadine.teleport.com> <LUDEMANN.96May16090356@expernet5.expernet.com>
Date: Fri, 17 May 1996 05:26:19 GMT
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In article <LUDEMANN.96May16090356@expernet5.expernet.com>,
Peter Ludemann <ludemann@pop.expernet.com> wrote:
>In article <4ndlgh$osh@nadine.teleport.com> there4@teleport.com (Therefore) writes:

[re:  'Fanshaw' for <Featherstonehaugh>]
>   That floors me. Why is this so? What is the history behind this? Has it always
>   been pronounced this way? (What does it even mean??) 

It's a surname.  A 'haugh' is an archaic term for a natural feature, but
I can't remember offhand if it's a water-meadow or a thicket or what.

> What 'rule' governs this
>   pronunciation? Is this 'rule' applied to other words? Why only British
>   English?

The Rule of Idiosyncratic Proper Name Pronunciations.  As Mr. Ludemann
goes one to say:

>Feathersontehaugh is a famous example, but there are lots of such
>place names.  For example, my grandparents lived in Teston, pronounced
>"Tea-son".  Oxford used to be Oxonford, but its spelling has kept up
>with pronunciation changes.  Etc.
[other examples deleted]
>Pronunciations change with time (or, in case of Tete Jaune, the
>local's inability to pronounce foreign words).  Orthography can be
>more resistant to change.  No surprise.

There's more to it than that.  The tendancy to 'slur' words (that is,
to simplify their pronunciation by means of assimilations and elisions)
is counteracted by the need to for comprehensibility.  The loss of 
transparency of derivation is an invitation to contraction.

That is to say, the more meaningful the parts of an utterance are, the
less likely people are to slur them.  In the phrase "white house",
both components are give full stress, because each component must be
clearly heard for the phrase to be properly understood.  The proper name 
"Whitehouse" is a unit.  In metaphoric usage, no reference to a house
which is white is intended or understood. Therefore, it's not surprising
that the second syllable carries only secondary stress and that the /h/ 
is often elided and the first vowel of the diphthong is often shortened 
and centralised.  I haven't yet heard some reduce the second syllable 
completely (i.e. ['waIt@s]), but I might well someday, as the white 
house that is responsible for the origin of this name fades further and
further from memory.  (The fact that the White House is still a residence
and is still white insulates it better from this sort of drift:  I al-
ways here the /h/ and full-value given to the diphthong, though the
stress is weak on the second component.)

Proper names, especially older ones, are quite arbitrary.  Occasionally,
the geographic feature enshrined in a place's name may still be apparent
(e.g. there is a bridge over the River Cam at Cambridge), but more often,
it's not.  As Mr. Ludemann points out, the relation is further obliterated
when the name comes from another language.  It doesn't matter that there 
are still straits at Detroit but there never were angels in Los Angeles;
to English-speakers, these are both "just names".

The relation is even more strained with surnames.  Very few Bakers make
their living by baking and not many Johnsons have fathers named "John"
(more than half aren't even sons).  Which brings us back to "Featherstone-
haugh".  Because the elements have long since had no particular reference 
to anything anymore ("haugh" is completely archaic), they haven't been
forced to adhere to the rules of sound change which affected the words
"feather", "stone," and "haugh".  In essence, their phonetic drift was
unchecked (insofar as the result was not homophonous with another common
name).

When was this result achieved?  Some members of the family have gone 
over to the spelling "Fanshaw" and the date of its appearance in texts
would give you a rough idea.


Speaking of proper names (and let's please not turn this into another
"funny names" thread--we've all read about Chomondelay a dozen times
by now), does anyone have sources for the pronunciation of "Gratiot"?  
There's a street of this name (named for an 18th century Frenchman)
in St. Louis, and I haven't a clue how to say it.  There's a Gratiot in
Wisconsin pronounced ['gr%S@t] and others in the region called ['gr%Si@t]
or ['greISi@t].  I can't find a French source (though the similar name
Gratiole is [gra'sjOl]).
-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
