A Rose By Any Other Name

I come from Kentucky, and that whole part of the U.S. is full of little towns and such that take their name from some bigger city somewhere else. There's a New York, a Paris (at least one each in KY, TN, and IL), a London (again, in several states), the list goes on but you get the idea. 

But it's kind of funny, because sometimes they don't pronounce the name the same as the "original" -- even if they SPELL it the same.

So, for instance, we have a big town called Versailles, but they don't say  /ver-SIGH/  like the French would; instead they pronounce it  /ver-SAILZ/  -- sort of a more "literal" phonetic reading of the word, I guess.

And the mid-west of the U.S. is covered with towns like that... Cairo is pronounced  /KAY-row/, Madrid is often pronounced as  /MA-drid/  (short "a" sound and accent on the first syllable)... and even Louisville, my hometown, takes its name from King Louis of France -- but we NEVER say  /LOU-ee-vill/  -- we say  /LOU-uh-vuhl/ (like if you've got a marble in your mouth -- or maybe a "big chaw o' tobaccy")... (just kidding)... 

Okay, well, I have always wondered about this, and I think there's a really interesting semantic question here. I guess I always think about how someone might argue that, "Those idiots! They are mispronouncing the name of their own town!" 

But I totally disagree (I think).

I mean, if everyone who lives in a town calls it  /ver-SAILZ/, then isn't THAT the name of the town?!? Even if they spell it the same as a city in France which is called  /ver-SIGH/, that doesn't mean the people who live in  /ver-SAILZ/  are mispronouncing the name of their town, right?

Like, I always think of some freaky parents who might decide to name their kid "T*#(&*@$" and call him "Fred." So when they write his name they write out: T*#(&*@$ ... but when they are talking to him they say, "Hey, Fred, c'mere!"

So what's the guy's name? 

Same thing with The Artist That Was Formerly Known As Prince But Then He Changed His Name To A Symbol And Then Changed His Mind Again And Wanted To Be Called The Artist Formerly Known As Prince... If he says, "My name is @!" then how can we argue?!? -- "Okay, @, get your butt to dinner!"

Well, this all occurs to me because there is a very famous singing group in HK that begs this very question -- in MY mind, at least. 

They are called Twins, and they have been the biggest act in HK teenage pop for the last 12 or 18 months. It's two amazingly cute girls, both in their late-twenties, who make like they're just high-school girls singing about puppy love and all that kind of stuff. 

Now, of course I will digress for a moment and tell you that lots of older folks in HK think they are HORRIBLE singers. "It's all studio magic!" -- I've heard more than one person say. But they sound GREAT to me, and their songs are good, the melodies and stuff, I mean, and I really LIKE them quite a bit. As a matter of fact I heard them singing "live" on a TV show a while back and was really surprised to hear how good they sounded -- everyone made out like they couldn't even carry a tune, so I expected a couple of Paula Abdul's (jumping around the stage singing a half-step flat)...  Well, and like I can't avoid saying again, they are pretty stinking cute, man. I mean, really; I'm not sure, but I think that these girls are probably so cute that even people who think they're not that good are like, "Aw, shucks, well, go ahead and sing your little love songs, you sweeties!" The reason I'm talking about them (besides the fact that they are cute, which is ALWAYS a reason to talk about a girl) is that the name of their group is Twins. "So what?" Well, it has to do with pronunciation. You have to understand that Chinese speakers who learn English may have some difficulty distinguishing and producing the "tw-" sound, so that it almost always comes out as "chw-"... So they may say things like, "I have been to that restaurant chwice"... or they'll sing that one children's song as "Chwinkle, chwinkle little star..."

There's also a tendency here in HK (which I suppose comes from the British background?) to say the short "i" sound as a long "e" sound... Students may say the word "pig" with a correct short "i" sound (though the "g" turns into a "k", like  /pik/ ). But they will pronounce "river" as  /REE-vuh/  or "simple" becomes  /SEEM-puhl/. (Actually, they would probably say  /SEEM-puhl-ah/  because of the tendency of Cantonese speakers to ALWAYS add some kind of "-ah" sound to the end of a sentence). OKAY, so I've been thinking about this and how even though they use the English word which WE would pronounce as  /twins/  as the written name of their group -- "TWINS" -- I think I wonder if REALLY, on some cosmic level, the "real" name of the group is  /chweens/. I mean, every single HK person that I have ever heard talk about these girls has called them Chweens. People on Channel V (the HK version of MTV) call them Chweens, my students call them Chweens, even THEY (the two girls) say the name as Chweens. SO ISN'T THAT THE NAME OF THE GROUP?!? Chweens?!??

And I'm wondering if I should just start calling them Chweens myself, in that case. It's like I almost feel like I'm trying to be some SNOB by saying "Twins" when that's REALLY not the name of the group...     Okay, well, that's all... I've just been thinking about that...     (And yes, the photos below are entirely gratuitous photos of "Chweens een dayer sweemsoots-ah!")...

This article was first posted: 1 June 2002

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