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A couple of weeks ago, my students requested a lesson on pronouncing place names in London and England because they were always having difficulty making themselves understood at train and coach stations. I didn’t find many resources on the Internet designed for language students, only more technical guides that often went into too much detail and didn’t provide any useful rules.
So I did some research, and found the following, which includes some really useful rules that can make the pronunciation of English place names guessable upon first encounter. I created a worksheet that you can copy and use in class or provide the URL to students for self-study. It may also be useful for teachers outside the UK who need to use materials that refer to English place names.
I’ve focused here on English place names, because many Scottish, Welsh and Irish place names draw on the other beautiful languages of the UK for their pronunciation (Welsh, Gaelic, Irish etc.), rather than Old English, and therefore don’t tend to follow the same rules. If anyone would like to share a pronunciation guide for these countries, please let me know and I’ll link to it gladly.
The link is provided below, but first here are a few useful rules:
- The vast majority of English place names are pronounced with the word stress on the first syllable (e.g. Yorkshire, Buckingham, Brighton, Plymouth, Oxford, Greenwich)
- The last syllable in place names is almost always unstressed, and includes one of two reduced vowel sounds /ǝ/ or /ɪ/ (see previous examples).
- Any silent consonants in such words tend to come at the start of, or just before the final syllable (e.g. the ‘h’ in Birmingham, or the ‘w’ in Chiswick and Norwich).
The main exception to this first syllable stress rule is place names made up of two or more words. Luckily, these also have clear rules for pronunciation:
- Place names including ‘St.’ (short for ‘Saint’, pronounced /seɪnt/) usually have the stress on the 1st syllable of the next word (e.g. St. Pancras, St. Paul’s, St. Albans)
- Place names with 3 or more hyphenated words, when pronounced in full, usually have the stress on the last word (e.g. Weston-Super-Mare, Southend-on-Sea, Stratford-upon-Avon).
- Place names of 2 words that are not hyphenated usually have the stress on the 1st syllable of the second word (e.g. Milton Keynes, West Bromwich).
Here’s the downloadable free worksheet for use in class or self-study. If you’re not sure about a word, just go to YouTube and type ‘How do you pronounce ___’, and a useful guide will usually appear. Enjoy!
Jason Anderson 
Thanks for sharing!
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The tricky ones are the most fun to teach. Although some of them, like Cholmondeley (Chumlee) and Godmanchester (Gumster) are annoyingly deceitful.
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Yes. I thought about including a little mention of these at the end, but they are rather rare, so I thought I’d stick to the more common ones! 🙂
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I lived in Godmanchester between 1975 and 1980 (while I was in Sixth Form and University), and my mother lived there much longer. I never heard anyone call it “Gumster” (and that includes the local farmer and his father who were born and bred locals. I had a friend who claimed the local term for locals was “Gumcestrian” – but I didn’t hear anyone use that either.
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I would like to ask where I should put the stress in “New York City”? It feels like when I say it in natural speech, the stress is only on the third word, “city”. I would like to seek some expert opinion please. Thank you in advanced.
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Hi Ming, Many thanks for your question. In my British English accent, I would agree, primary stress on the 3rd syllable (‘Ci’ in ‘city’), and secondary on ‘New’. But language is diverse, and there is probably no single correct way to pronounce the name of a multicultural city.
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Hi Jason, Thank you so much for the response. Appreciate it.
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Hi, I was told place names all start with the stress on the first syllable, but when I look at the name Southampton the stress is on hamp. Can you explain
Thanks
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Well spotted Angela! Note that above I do not offer these rules as hard and fast, only rules of thumb: “The vast majority…”, “The main exception…” However, interestingly, Southampton does fall under the exceptions, if it is parsed like West Bromwich, as two words (see rule 3). While spelling conventions may not register this historically, many place names received their current pronunciation centuries ago when the majority of people were illiterate, thus meaning it is semantically identical to West Bromwich – two semantic elements combined. The elision of the ‘h’ in pronunciation would have occurred naturally early on in this process, possibly leading to the standardisation of the current one word spelling.
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Thanks!!Id like to kno how you stress the proper name of a shop Example : Wayside Cafe
Thanks
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