To pronounce this street correctly

[wherethestreetshaveasillyname]

I just moved into small business premises locally and people have been asking for the address.

Now the street shares the name with a North American location that’s semi well-known in the UK - to avoid outing myself, let’s call it Illinois Street (it’s similar).

But every time I pronounce it (ill-ih-NOY street), I get blank looks. Then, when I describe the location, I get “ah you mean ill-ih-nwahh street!” and a raised ‘are you a bit stupid’ eyebrow.

What should I do?

A)keep saying it correctly

B) say it like everyone else seems to- but then look weird when I encounter someone who says it correctly

C) do as I am currently and long-windedly doing and say “oh it’s on Illinois Street, or, ill-i-nwa street as people seem to pronounce it round here.

(this is life-and-death and not at all lighthearted btw)

How you do you know you're definitely in the right? If you're new to the street/area, there's every chance you're actually the one who is wrong.

Places have strange pronunciations all the time. I live fairly near a village called Cogenhoe. Pronounced Cook-no.
I spent my first few years of life in a village called Combwich. Pronounced Come-itch.

How do you know the correct pronunciation? Are you sure the street has been named after the US location? Rather than, say, someone who's name it is and pronounces it the local way? Find out how the street got its name and use that as your guide. When you know you're correct pronounce it that way and ignore the eyebrows, safe in the knowledge you're right.

And the place name isn't actually Illinois, did you miss that?

Place name could be Towcester (as PP mentioned) and the locals are actually correct in their pronunciation. No idea why you insist on calling them names

Definitely go with the local pronounciation. People pissed themselves laughing when I referred to our local butchers first off as Voisins (pronounced the way the french say neighbours - vwozan - which is how it's spelt) - and said "oh you mean voyzins" and apparently that is what I did mean.

Also see Doublebois in Cornwall - I was pronouncing that like "two lots of woods" in French only to be equally horrified to find out it's pronounced "double boys"

Brough.

Looks so simple, but so many ways it could be said "correctly"!

Clearly you’re wrong and the locals are right. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I'm afraid Tootie drives me to such heights of irritation that I have to skip some scenes.

Oh I've been in exactly the same situation and I refuse to pronounce it how everyone else does, and just try to avoid saying it if I can. There is a group of streets in my area with Scottish place names: Aberdeen, Glasgow, Ness etc. One of the streets is called Lomond and people mention it frequently as there's a set of shops there but EVERYONE pronounces it le- MOND.

The Scottish town of Irvine is also an American town pronounced as it looks: Irvine. But in Scotland it's Irvin.

because Scottish place names generally follow Gaelic stress patterns, and the stress in not on the first syllable.

I don't know about Caius but I was always told at Magdalene (the Cambridge one) that it was pronounced that way because the founder was Lord Audley and he wanted his name somewhere in the college, hence Maud-lin. Whether this is true or not I have no idea. I now live somewhere with a Magdalen Street which is pronounced as spelt, I actually have no problem with remembering its pronunciation but DH always calls it Maudlin Street despite not ever having lived in Oxford or Cambridge.

The road I currently live on has the same name as a town and if you knew the town you would pronounce it one way, but if you were just reading it as a word you would pronounce it a different way (different vowel sound). There doesn't seem any consensus about it but I think the majority go with the way it looks not the town.

No, I didn't miss that, but that is the example OP gave 🙄

They look at OP like she's dumb hence me calling them supercilious. Did you miss that?

Pronounce it like the locals, otherwise you just come across as stuck up.

There is/was a Council estate in Deptford called Pepys Estate after Samuel Pepys (peeps) who had local connections. Everyone local called it Peppys.

edited- was meant to quote a post!

There is actualy a reason for this- it's an old English/Scottish letter- 3, that looks a bit like a z.

Legend has it that change in the pronunciation was a clever boffins, student gag, on account of the miserable, maudlin Dean at the time. The pronunciation change stuck and is now the same in Oxford as well as Cambridge.

The z thing is a wee favourite of mine. Old Scots used a yow/yogh character to symbolise the y/yh sound in these words. The yow fell out of use and was replaced by the z character, which has changed the way we see the words. Hence Lenzie/Menzies, etc. Lenzie is still Len-yey in Gaelic and the Lib Dem Menzies Campbell known as Ming, etc

This is disappointing.

I’d be like you, OP. I want to be right more than I want to be understood 😄

A colleague once asked me about my journey to work. I said it was easy enough; I just transferred to the Central Line at Ho-burn (correct pronunciation of Holborn). She kept saying “Eh? Wot?” - I knew very well why, but couldn’t bring myself to change my pronunciation. So I described the location and she said in best Audrey Hepburn flower seller accent, “Ohhhhh - ‘Olborn!!”

Also keen on Chatelherault in Hamilton, pronounced Shat-le-row

What makes you think the N American pronunciation is the "correct" one?

@wherethestreetshaveasillyname there is a housing scheme in a local town called menzieshill. it is not pronounced mingushill or even menzieshill. locals pronounce it as meenishill.

This is what Magdalene says:

One of the most common questions we receive is about pronunciation. Despite being spelt 'Magdalene' in the biblical form, the College name is pronounced 'Maudlyn'.
When Lord Audley refounded the College in 1542, he dedicated it to St Mary Magdalene. The choice of name appears to have been partly self-referential, as early documents often spell it phonetically as ‘Maudleyn’, echoing Audley’s own name. The final ‘e’ was added in the mid-nineteenth century to help distinguish Magdalene College, Cambridge, from Magdalen College, Oxford, particularly with the advent of the postal service

B, obviously. Because that is the name of the street, whatever the name of the other place is.