How do you pronounce Henry David Thoreau’s last name? It’s not “thur-ROH” but “THUR-roh,” as if pronounced like the word thorough, with the accent on the first syllable. The author of Walden (Bookshop|Amazon) had a French grandfather who was shipwrecked off the coast of New England; hence, the spelling. Neighbors, including Louisa May Alcott’s father and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s son, left written records confirming it, and voice actors in a new Ken Burns film on PBS were directed accordingly. Speaking of pronunciation, the new book Why We Talk Funny (Bookshop|Amazon) by linguist Valerie Fridland, contains a wealth of information about pronunciation and dialects. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Pronouncing Thoreau Correctly”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.
I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
Well, it turns out that all these years now, I’ve been mispronouncing the name of the author
Of Walden.
You know, the guy who moved to the woods beside that farm.
Oh, yes, I saw that.
All this time, I thought his name was pronounced Thoreau, but no.
How is it pronounced then?
Thoreau.
Thoreau.
Like I thoroughly did it.
Yeah, or I’m thoroughly surprised that it’s pronounced that way.
But here’s the story.
Thoreau’s grandfather was of French extraction.
He was shipwrecked off the coast of New England in the 1700s and just stayed there, hence the spelling T-H-O-R-E-A-U,
Which isn’t exactly a New England name.
And we actually have written records of neighbors like Louisa May Alcott’s father and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s son writing about how their friend’s name was pronounced Thoreau with the accent on the first syllable.
And there’s a new Ken Burns film about him on PBS.
And the voice actors for that film, including George Clooney and Meryl Streep, were all directed to pronounce his name Thoreau.
And apparently that wasn’t easy for them.
And Grant is not easy for me either.
After all these years, I don’t know that I’m going to be able to do that.
And it’s not the first time it’s happened where we’ve discovered that a public figure’s name was widely mispronounced.
I’m thinking of former Vice President Dick Cheney, which everyone says Cheney.
Wow.
Huh.
Well, yeah, the pronunciations in the accents we grow up with, they’re really sticky, aren’t they?
They really are.
And unfortunately, sometimes we only know these names through our reading, which I guess is a good thing.
And we don’t always get it right.
But there’s help.
Yeah.
And speaking of reading, there’s a wonderful new book that I want to talk about later in the show that’s called Why We Talk Funny.
It’s by a linguist.
And it’s really fascinating.
So let’s talk about that later in the show.
And we’d love to take your calls and questions.
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