British place names that are not said the way they are written
Leicester - LES-ter
How to use this sheet
British place names are the last place where the spelling of the Middle Ages survives untouched while the pronunciation has moved on for six centuries. Whole syllables have been swallowed, and the spelling never caught up. A fluent speaker who reads one of these names as written is marked at once as a stranger, and in a business or travel setting that is worth avoiding. The names in the table are the ones you will actually need: large cities, transport hubs and London districts. Each comes with a plain respelling, stressed syllable in capitals, and a note on the pattern it belongs to, because most of these names follow one of three habits and knowing the habit lets you guess the rest.
| Place | Sounds like | Pattern |
|---|---|---|
| Leicester | LES-ter | Swallowed middle: the written middle syllable has vanished |
| Worcester | WUSS-ter | Swallowed middle, same pattern as the row above |
| Gloucester | GLOSS-ter | Swallowed middle; the same ending appears in all three |
| Norwich | NORR-ij | Shrunk ending: the final letters soften and the w is silent |
| Greenwich | GREN-ij | Shrunk ending and a shortened first vowel |
| Edinburgh | ED-in-bruh | Shrunk ending: the last syllable is a weak vowel, never a hard g |
| Southwark | SUTH-uk | Both patterns at once: the w is silent and the vowels weaken |
| Marylebone | MAR-li-bun | Swallowed middle; locals drop a whole syllable |
| Derby | DAR-bee | Older pronunciation: the written e is said as an a |
| Reading | RED-ing | Unrelated word: it only shares its spelling with the verb for books |
In use
The train to Leicester leaves from platform four. She grew up in Norwich and moved to Greenwich for work. Our head office is in Reading, not in Derby.
Watch out
Leicester - LIE-ches-ter
The error above reads the name in row one letter by letter, producing three syllables where local speech has two. It is the single most recognisable outsider's mistake in British English, and the names in rows two and three invite exactly the same one. The safest habit is to trust the pattern column: once you know that this family of names swallows its middle syllable, you will read a new name of the same shape correctly the first time. When in doubt, listen for the announcement on the platform before you say the name yourself.