Question of the Week: What’s your favorite Civil War mispronunciation?
Louisville or Louisville? Cairo or Cairo? Zouave? What is your favorite (or least favorite) mispronunciation related to the Civil War that you have heard?
Louisville or Louisville? Cairo or Cairo? Zouave? What is your favorite (or least favorite) mispronunciation related to the Civil War that you have heard?
I heard a guy online pronounce Richard Ewell’s last name as “Eee-well”.
Macadamized roads. I always thought it was mac-a-dam, but then I found it was named after someone and his name was Mac-Adam.
LA-fayette or La-FAY-ette McLaws.
Same problem with the town closest to Chicamauga battlefield
Agree with NYGiant above- also the Getteesburg/ Gettisburg question
Two I find interesting. The different pronunciation of the Virginia town Staunton and the pronunciation of Gen. William B. Taliaferro’s name.
Wladimir Krzyzanowski, although I’ve only heard a couple of people attempt it. No wonder they called him “Kriz”. Alexander Schimmelfennig can be another tongue-twister.
I agree with “Kriz” as a tough one. I’d add Zachariah Deas.
Darius Couch (as in sofa) or Darius Cooch???
Cairo. It sounds like a syrup, not an Egyptian city.
Mispronouncing cavalry as calvary. Two completely different meanings, people!
Not surprised none of the professionals above mentioned the name of Lee’s general whom he addressed as “Henry.” But as an amateur it’s one that took a while for me to enunciate properly through my teeth the sound of “Heeth” and not, with exhaled breath, say “heth”.
My view of the biggest mispronunciation is “cavalry” being pronounced as “Calvary” – I taught middle school history for 25 years, and heard this mispronunciation from both students and other teachers!
Confederate Generals William B. Taliaferro and Benjamin Hugar. Pronounced TOL-in-er and Hue-gee, respectively.
TOL-iv-er! Sorry, autocorrect got me!
How to pronounce Leonidas, as in Leonidas Polk, the Fighting Bishop.
Confederate major general and French aristocrat Camille Armand Jules Marie de Polignac, division commander in the Trans-Mississippi … none of his guys could pronounce his name (and I can either) so they just called him “Prince Polecat.”
How about Norfolk, VA? Is it Nor-FOKE, is it Nor-FORK, or is it Nor- well, I won’t write that out, but it rhymes with “TRUCK”?!
The name of the city I grew up in,Baltimore. If you are not from that city, it is pronounce Bal T more. But if you are from Charm City, it is pronounced: Bal “Lee” mur. The T is never stated and “more” becomes mur.
The word “secession” itself. I’ve heard it pronounced so many ways that I’m not sure what is historically correct.
Catharpin Rd. – there’s one that’s part of Manassas battlefield & another in Spotsylvania that’s part of the Wilderness & Spotsylvania Courthouse battlefields. Each is pronounced differently. One Cat-harpin & the other more Cath-arpin. I forget which is which sometimes.
Born in Gloucester County, Virginia in1822, William Booth Taliaferro attended Harvard and then William & Mary, graduating when he was 19. The nephew of James A. Seddon, Secretary of War for the Confederacy, Taliaferro rose to command the Stonewall Division, and was later Grand Master of Masons in Virginia. The Taliaferro family home was burned by the British during the Revolution, and then his own home, not far from Richmond, was burned by the Yankees in the Civil War.
Go to Southall Freeman’s ‘Lee’s Lieutenants’ and read his list of significant officers in the Army of Northern Virginia. Each of them but one holds a grand, glorious old English name, and there is one Italian – Taliaferro. But in classic Southern Speak, the people pronounced his name “Toliver” – making him an honorary English descendant.