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From: "Dick Mathews" <>
Subject: [Ess] Pronunciation of Tolleshunt D'Arcy
Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 10:18:34 -0000
References: <000901c5e39b$6c6cc1b0$9a7a38d4@Michael> <007301c5e3d4$722a16a0$0302a8c0@Vaio>


Colleen wrote

> Tolleshunt is pronounced Tollsent, though in old Essex dialect, it was
> sometimes pronounced as Tollerhoont or Tollers-hoont D'Arcy (without a
'sh'
> sound) and you will sometimes see the name misspelled on the census
records
> of those who migrated away from the village for that reason.


I've got a copy (properly stamped by the Essex Record Office!) of a
settlement certificate (ref. D/P 105/13/1) dated 1753 from the Overseers of
the Poor of the Hamlet of Ballingdon addressed to "The Churchwardens and
Overseers of the Poor of the Parish of Towlsondarcy" - so that's another
pronunciation.

Pronunciation of placenames and surnames is an absolute minefield - I
wondered what I'd find on Google, and the first hit (for a search term of
'pronunciation surnames placenames' was an E.U. funded project at the
University of Poitiers! "The Pronunciation lexicon of British place names,
surnames and first names was produced by the University of Poitiers (France)
through a funding from ELRA in the framework of the European Commission
project LRsP&P (Language Resources Production & Packaging - LE4-8335). This
lexicon is an SGML-encoded database of British proper names. All entries
belong to one or several of the following categories: place-names (a
quasi-exhaustive list of toponyms from England, Scotland and Wales), and
surnames or first names (a selection of names based on an extensive survey
of bibliographic sources in the field of British onomastics combined with
lists compiled by the author of this lexicon). " There are 160,000 entries.
Unfortunately it looks as if you have to buy it. I haven't ploughed through
the other 20,000 hits!!

Perhaps someone knows of a good online resource for this?

Dick Mathews


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