The Thames, A River in Connecticut

Just reposting a discussion I found on Language Hat about the proper pronunciation of the Thames (and why the Thames River in CT--all 15 miles of its glorious length--is pronounced θeɪmz (that's a theta, like in "third", and the word rhymes with "James") and not like the Thames in England (rhymes with hems).

Query, Posted by Annabelle Morison at June 22, 2005 11:22 PM: One of the most interesting place names that comes to my mind when it comes to confusion of pronunciation is that of the Thames River in London, England. So far, I've heard it pronounced in three ways. Half the time, I've heard it pronounced "Tems", while other times, it was pronounced more like "Tames". But most recently I read that the original pronunciation of the name of this river is "Thaymes". Many people have told me that "Tems" is the only way that it is correctly pronounced, but I can tell you, that's definitely debatable. If "Thaymes" was the original, and thus was the correct pronunciation, how in this world did it change from "Thaymes" to "Tems"? It seems this is an unsolved mystery. Was it a British thing? Was it an American Thing? What is the story behind this confusion of pronunciation?


Reply, Posted by language hat at June 23, 2005 07:29 AM: I read that the original pronunciation of the name of this river is "Thaymes".

Your source was wrong. There was never a /th/ sound in the word; the Roman name was Tamesis, from a Celtic name also preserved in the rivers Tame and Tamar. The h was added in a fit of Renaissance pseudo-etymologizing. In England it's always /temz/.

I believe the Thames River in Connecticut is pronounced /theymz/, but that of course is simple spelling pronunciation, like /menziyz/ for Menzies and /keytlin/ for Caitlin.

So basically, just another American mispronunciation based on spelling. And there are so many.

I have to admit, sometimes I have fits of Renaissance pseudo-etymologizing. Those are really fun, but can be unpleasant for the people around me.


(The Thames River, seen from the waterfront in New London, CT--from Wikipedia)

On Cockneys and their English, Ahead of the 2012 Olympics

It should be easy for American visitors to London for the 2012 Olympics to get around, right? They speak English, after all. Not so fast, warns NPR's London-based correspondent, Philip Reeves.

The games themselves will be held in East London where, according to Reeves, "people speak in code." This is the land of Cockney rhyming slang, a curious linguistic contrivance developed in Victorian times by those who wanted to evade the police. Though East London is ethnically diverse nowadays, and many Cockney speakers have left (and some claims have been made that Cockney English is on its way out) the slang persists. For a compilation of examples, you can go to cockneyrhymingslang.co.uk. Some London bloggers are putting together special rhyming slang just for the games.

Now here's an interesting origin, while I've been focusing so much on birds in this blog (see my magpie post). Cockney sounds like "cock" and it is in fact related. Cockney as a noun very early on (14th, 15th centuries) meant an egg laid by a hen or "cock's egg" (I don't try to understand the problem here that cocks don't lay eggs). The "-ey" part at the end is related to the German word for egg, "Ei." A derivative meaning soon after was a child who remained too close to his mother, one who couldn't wean himself away, a mother's darling and, hence, an overly effeminate man or an effeminate townsman.

When Cockney started to be used as a term for one born within the city of London, a 17th century usage, this seemed to be because such a person was deemed inferior to other English people. 1617: "Londiners, and all within the sound of Bow-bell, are in reproch called Cocknies, and eaters of buttered tostes."

And just as so often groups get associated with their language patterns, Cockney came to refer just as much to the accent of these particular Londoners as to the population itself, though this transition didn't seem to occur until around 1900. In 1890, the English publisher Andrew White Tuer wrote of "Back-slang, or Costers' Cockney, in which the letters forming leading words are turned hindside before." Cockney speech was the supposedly inferior language that Henry Higgins tried to correct in Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion/My Fair Lady.

So there we have the Cockney, a strange bird of its own, to be handled carefully by American visitors who might assume they know what to expect. Separated by a common language, indeed. (I highly recommend, by the way, the blog "separated by a common language," which focuses on all kinds of discrepancies between British and American English usage).