Scottish Place Names

[Sturmundcalm]

Saw this on FB and it made me contemplate the difficulty of guessing pronunciation sometimes - and the opportunity to judge ;-)

I actually knew the last five but wouldn't have got the first one and would probably have slightly mangled the second. What are your favourite awkward place names? I feel like Milngavie takes a lot of heat just cause it's more central belt...

You didn't put the link in.
I got loads of names wrong when I married and moved here, including Milngavie. Bennachie was another - I thought it was pronounced Bennakie.
lots of funny pronunciations in England too, Mousehole for example.

I like Strathaven and Buccleuch as in Duke of. Kilncadzow and Kirkudbright are also good ones.

My favourite place name in Scotland is not hard to pronounce I just love it. Auchtermuchty.

My grandfather was a lifeboatman in the Inner Hebrides. He got a bit of infamy for a bit for swearing over the Radio that "its doesn't damn matter if he's calling it GIG-HA not Gee-ha, we just need to bloody get there"

Most folk who do not know trip over the basics such as Kirkaldy and Islay, and of course the American pronunciation of Edinburgh or Glasgow...

But then we also get onto oddities like Chatelherault, Kirkcudbright, Wemyss Bay, Ardeonaig, Hawick, Friockheim and Bunnahabhain.

There has to be giggles over the Orkney and Shetland Twatt too - but not over pronuciation.

Our southern England friends really get confused by Scone being pronounced a third way from what they expect...

Not the same thing really but a friend told me that she overheard a man in the fishing tackle shop in Tobermory trying to explain to a Canadian ‘aye, no, ye cannae fush Fishnish but ye can fush Mishnish’. Our names for places can be confusing 😆

A knowledge of Single Malts can be very useful in Scottish place names.

Although I once had a long argument with a guy in a pub because of his superior knowledge of whiskey and insisting it was I- Lay. He couldn't accept I was right... even if my family was from that Island.

'Culross' trips up a lot of people. When I tell them how it should be pronounced, they often don't believe me - and that's Scottish natives!

Ballachullish too :)

Avoch
Culross
Ballachulish

The Z in Menzies Castle and Finzean is pronounced as a G, but dropped in Culzean Castle, which is so confusing.

Heard Dunfermline pronounced Dun-firm-LINE once which was pretty funny.

Glenmorangie is so often pronounced wrongly there’s no point in correcting 🥲

Glenfiddich with a hard CH is another common one!

How do people pronounce Glenmorangie wrongly? PILs live just up the road from there.
Another one I’ve heard is the pronunciation of Greenock in the same way as Greenwich.

The wrong way is Glen-mor-RAN-jie with a hard A. Should be Glen-mor-anjie, with soft A and to rhyme with orangey. I would stress the Glen but some stress the Mor, it’s possibly an accent/regional thing!?

Milngavie was the one that got me when I moved to Glasgow. Lived in Fife as a child so the East Coast names were more familiar.

My favourite place name is Ecclefechan- I was once accused of swearing when saying it! And no I wasn't doing an impression of Mutley at the time 😂

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1AF95h9gcR/

Sorry!! Had actually done as a picture but clearly that didn't work...

I just looked up how Culross should be prounced. I had absolutely no idea !

I 'm originally from the North of England but I've lived in Scotland 48 years and I thought I had quite a reasonable knowledge of how Scottish place names should be pronounced.But obviously I'm not as good as I thought!

I once announced to a taxi driver that we were going to Cock Burn street instead of Co’Burn 😳 I was 18 on my first pub crawl 🤣

If I had a pound for every American I'd heard asking about Glass-cow or Sterling.

You might have fun tracking some of these on this website - meanings, pronuciations etc. You can search all sorts of different ways depending on what you're after. https://www.ainmean-aite.scot/searchable-map/

Is that as in Ecclefechan tarts which are amazing - sort of like a cross between a mince pie and florentine.

My personal favourite place name is Fochabers.

Yes @ExquisiteSocialSkills it is. And my children didn't believe it was an actual place until I pointed it out on a road sign after we'd crossed into Scotland and were on the A74(M) Hoping morrisons will have some Ecclefechan tarts in for Christmas otherwise I'll have to get some sent down (we're on the south coast now so a long way from excellent baked goods!)