Have you ever wondered why so many Scottish names are pronounced entirely differently from how they look? Well in the case of words with a Y or a Z in them it’s quite simply because the letter of the alphabet which was originally used to spell it is now no longer in use because it’s archaic.
Think of the names Dalziel, Dalyell (both of which are pronounced Dee-ell).
Then there’s Culzean (Cull-ane)
The name MacKenzie comes originally from MacConnachie/MacKennie/MacKinney …
Then of course there’s Menzies which should be Ming-iss.
There are a lot more I’m sure but I can’t think of them at the moment. Anyway, you get the idea.
The letter of the alphabet which is no longer in use, and causes the confusion is yogh and you can read about it here in an article about Scottish handwriting.
Yogh looked like the letter z with an extra loop on the bottom, or sometimes like a 3 slightly below the line. I’m sure you’ll probably remember seeing it on old documents if you like perusing things like that.
I’m mentioning it because when we went to visit Culzean Castle recently the guide told us that he had no idea why it was pronounced Cull-ane, I suppose it was originally Cull-yane. Anyway, we enlightened him after the tour and he was going to add it to his explanations. I thought it was something which was commonly known, but maybe not.
Isn’t language a wonderful thing.
I am always reminded of Beauchamp being Beecham.
Jo,
And Marjoriebanks is Marchbanks. Cholmondely is Chumly. Belvoir is Beever….
Try giving Hawaiian a go… đŸ˜€
Pearl,
I think I’ll pass on that, thanks!
I lived at Fort Belvoir, Virginia and had no idea it had BEEN pronounced Beever. It’s on the Potomac River formerly George Washington’s estate by Mount Vernon. A beautiful area. Do you think George and Martha pronounced it that way? Do you know the blog http://www.dovegreyreader.typepad.com? She’s from Devon,UK but posts lovely pictures and info about Scotland. Today’s were of the Orkney Islands. Lovely
Lorraine,
I’ve seen bits of the Mount Vernon estate, it looks gorgeous. I think that George and Martha probably did pronounce it Beever/Beaver because he descends from the family who lived at Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire.
http://washington.ancestryregister.com/ALBINI00006.htm
I sometimes hop over to Dovegreyreader but not for a while, I’ll do so now as we want to go to Orkney to see the archaeology there, as well as the scenery. Thanks.
I didn’t know about the letter yogh! We were taught to write z that way when we were learning “joined up writing”. How amazing that it was a different letter altogether.
Evee,
I thought it was quite widely known, but obviously not! You should see what our boys learned to do when they were taught joined up writing. It’s called Fife Script, and I felt like complaining about it, it’s so messy, we would have been belted for such bad hand-writing. The r’s look like v’s and and v’s look like u’s – and so on.