Shrewsbury, Etymology and Mob Rule

Previously published on the Shropshire Blues blog, which isn’t maintained much now as I no longer live in the area. [DH, 25-03-2025]

[Updated 6th July 2015 and again in 2024, after I used it as the basis for an appendix in  ‘So Sound You Sleep’]

Rant coming up…

Quite a few English towns aren’t (locally) pronounced the way they’re spelt: Bicester, Wednesbury and Leominster spring to mind. I’ve never lived in any of those towns, but I have to wonder whether they give rise to the same acrimony as the evergreen controversy over the ‘correct’ pronunciation of Shrewsbury. The one in Shropshire, that is: I suspect that the residents of the other Shrewsburys to be found elsewhere on the globe have better things to worry about.

In my (by no means authoritative) opinion, it’s not really a matter of what is correct. In fact, I consider it offensive when people insist that the only ‘correct’ way is the way they say it, whichever pronunciation they favour. It’s a matter of common (but by no means universal) contemporary usage versus traditional/historical usage versus etymological probability. Anglo-Saxon speakers might, I suppose, have pronounced Scrobbesbyrig (not the only possible spelling in the 11th century, of course) with a long O (Oh) or short O as in ‘cobble’ – since the language was West Germanic (i.e. closely related to modern Standard German), I’m extrapolating from words like ‘Dom’ (long O) and ‘Sonntag’* (short O): a long U sound as in ‘Flug’ (or ‘rune’) seems less likely. But historical linguistics isn’t my area of expertise, and (apparently unlike some people in certain Facebook groups) I’m not old enough to remember how Shrewsbury folk (or Salopians) spoke in the 19th century, let alone the 11th.

darwin2

Darwin is keeping his own counsel on the topic.

Probably more people say ‘Shroosbree’ or ‘Shoesbree’ now than was the case when I was young and I don’t have a problem with that, even though I’m going to stick with the long O and ‘…bury’ rather than ‘bree’ myself. I have a soft spot for the traditional, and not only in music.  But words and names change over time, and it isn’t necessarily a ‘posh versus common’ thing, either. It’s just the way that language evolves over time. I notice that the BBC** doesn’t seem to insist on the ‘O’ pronunciation any more (for what that’s worth), and sometimes presenters use both ‘Shrosebury’ and ‘Shroosbury’ (or a close variant) in the same programme. (I also notice that railway announcers have also pretty much abandoned the long ‘o’, but I’m sympathetic to anyone English who has to cope with some of the Welsh placenames on the Heart of Wales line.)

However, the question as to which is ‘correct’ is a common thread in Shrewsbury-related Facebook groups. Sadly, it usually degenerates into name-calling. Despite my observation in the second paragraph, I don’t think I’ve heard anyone insist that the use of the long ‘o’ is the only ‘correct’ pronunciation since the 1960s I’m not sure if the BBC Pronunciation Unit still has a ruling on it, but the old Rowley’s House Museum did have an exhibit explaining the origins of the traditional pronunciation without, to the best of my recollection, insisting that it should be used. However, there are always people who insist that the only way is Essex – sorry, Shroosbury (or even Shoosbree) – and that anyone who disagrees is:

  • From Off (as a Phil Rickman character might say – that is, not local): I’ve been told in all seriousness that the fact that I spent the first 19 years of my life in Shrewsbury didn’t mean I was entitled to an opinion, because I was born in a maternity hospital four miles or so outside the town. In any case, having spent most of my working life in the South (where the jobs were!), I am automatically disqualified. Besides, look at my name: the village of Harley is nearly ten miles outside Shrewsbury, so my roots are obviously foreign.
  • Stupid, because it’s spelt ‘ew’, so it ought to be pronounced like ‘shrew’, even though its etymology has nothing to do with those little creatures with no heads. At least, they didn’t have any heads when our cats used to leave their little cadavers on the decking in Greenfields. (Eeeeewwwwwww!!!!!) Mind you, they (the cats) originally came from Yorkshire: was that behaviour they learned in Shrewsbury? Perhaps there aren’t any shrews living oop in t’North.
  • Stupid, because Shakespeare wrote ‘The Taming of the Shrew’, not ‘The Taming of the Shrow’. (Apart from the fact that we’ve already established that the etymology of the town’s name has nothing to do with shrews, the pronunciation of English has changed dramatically since his time.)
  • Illiterate (2). It should be pronounced like it’s spelt. Like Bicester, Beaminster, Derby and Leominster, not to mention Kirkcudbright. Oh, wait a minute…
  • A toff or snob, because only the toffs pronounce it Shrowsbury. In fact, I was brought up on a council estate, but I pronounced it the older way, apparently, because I wanted to be a toff. Well, I guess no Labour leader is ever going to make me a life peer, then. It never fails to fascinate me how much people who’ve never met me know about my psychological make-up. Or even my physical attributes: I remember with affection someone who commented on one of my blogs that the string of letters after my name – all but one related to my now lapsed membership of several professional organizations – was probably meant to compensate for undeveloped genitalia. Well, you’ll never get the chance to check, sweetie.
  • A history teacher. Owwww!!!!! That really hurts!!! Not only a (yuk!) teacher but a history teacher. No, you can’t cause me much grief that way, folks. I worked for many years in the anti-virus industry, an occupation which seems to rank in status in the security industry as inferior to traffic wardens, tax collectors and politicians. I’ve been married to a teacher and a social worker. (Not at the same time.) I’ve been insulted by professionals…
  • Wrong, because no-one calls Dewsbury ‘Dozebury’. Well, I don’t suppose they do, but Dewsbury has a completely different etymological evolution. I haven’t heard anyone call Newbury ‘Nobury’ or Crewe ‘Crow’, either, but I’m not convinced of the relevance of that point, either.
  • Wrong, because if you really want to be archaic and traditionalist, you should call it Pengwern. Well, Giraldus Cambriensis does cite a tradition that associates Pengwern – as in the early seat of the Kings of Powys, though they later moved further westward – with Shrewsbury, but there’s no conclusive evidence that I’m aware of. In any case, I don’t think there’s a local preference for calling York Eboracum or Canterbury Durou̯ernon (or even Durovernum) either.
  • My favourite: wrong, because those are shrews on the town’s coat of arms, not shrows. See Shrewsbury’s Coat of Arms: a New Argument.
  • My second favourite: wrong, because Americans pronounce it Shroosbury. With all due respect to my many American friends – who no doubt regard this idiocy with amused bewilderment, if it crosses their radar at all – I have to wonder if the UK inhabitants of Derby and Birmingham (not to mention the French inhabitants of Orléans) are now using the pronunciations Durby, Birmingham with the stress on ‘-ham’, and Awlins (as in Noo Awlins). I’m particularly doubtful of the last one, in the homeland of the Académie française.
  • Because there’s a meme around showing Homer Simpson saying ‘It’s Shrewsbury, not Shrowsbury’ (or something like that). Well, why didn’t you say so? If a fictional character noted for his borderline alcoholism and addiction to doughnuts has spoken, who am I to disagree?
  • Because I say so. Because you are. Because it is. End of.

So which is ‘correct’? I don’t think the word ‘correct’ applies, though I think it’s probable that the older pronunciation will continue to decline and perhaps be forgotten in a few years. And there’s no real reason why it shouldn’t. It seems a pity, though, that the process should be accelerated and by the sort of petty bullying that sometimes afflicts perfectly nice, respectable people when they start using social media, replacing not only simple courtesy and mutual respect, but logic.  The class war is alive and well and living in Shrewsbury. Which is why even though I’m not ashamed to have come from Shrowesbury (a legitimate older spelling, by the way, but then the standardized spelling is a fairly recent development), I’m sometimes glad that I don’t have to live there now.

I should also point out that I have many friends in Shrewsbury who may use either pronunciation (or even ‘Salop’ (an alternative name with a long and honourable tradition behind it) but wouldn’t dream of ‘correcting’ people who bat for the other team. And that Shrewsbury holds no monopoly on parochialism or reverse snobbery. (Some of the most parochial people I’ve ever met have been Londoners…)

I have considered skirting the whole issue by using the Welsh name Amwythig, but I suppose that would inspire general bewilderment and draw even more abuse down upon my head for mispronunciation. I admit to having lived for a while in Wales in the early 70s, but can’t claim to have mastered the language: I’ve forgotten nearly all of the little I learned at that time. (The little Cymraeg I learned, that is: I may still remember a little social sciences and psychology, since they impinged upon my later studies and career in computer science.)

*Clearly any claim I had to have mastered – to the limited extent that A-level can be described as ‘mastering’ – the German language in the 1960s has long since expired. Well, even though I have visited Germany and Austria a few times in the last couple of decades for conferences, I’ve had very little need to exercise my extraordinarily rusty linguistic skills. Thanks to Geoff Maddocks, who pointed out that Montag is pronounced with a long ‘o’ and suggested that Sonntag was a better example.

**The BBC did recently (July 2015) report an attempt to ‘settle‘ the debate. Of course, it did no such thing, though a majority of respondents (58%) did vote for ‘Shroosbury’ (it’s not clear whether or how the ballot distinguished between Shroosbury and Shoosbury – 7% of respondents did vote ‘other’). That’s hardly surprising: those are the ways in which most people pronounce it nowadays. I don’t see people who prefer ‘Shrozebury’ being swayed by mob rule, though.

David Harley

Heartbreak Hotels

Must be hard times in the hotel industry. I seem to have had email in the past few days from every hotel I’ve ever stayed in, reminding me of how much they miss me. What they also seem to be missing is that I don’t usually visit a place because of the hotel: I stay in the hotel so that I can visit the place. Or, until I retired, because that was where the conference was.

This is especially true of airport hotels: I just used them in days gone by for a necessary stopover en route to or from somewhere*. For instance, there are many good reasons to visit Vienna, but adding to my loyalty points by spending a few days at the airport hotel is not a priority. (I only ever stayed there if I got there late or needed an early flight to the next destination.) What’s more, I have many thousands of loyalty points that I may never find a use for before they expire, because most of the places I still want to visit don’t have a hotel within 50 miles that will accept them.

*There was one instance where the conference hotel was actually on the perimeter of the airport at Geneva, which was more than usually convenient, but unusual – airport hotels rarely have enough in the way of conference facilities to support more than a moderately-sized seminar.

When I lived and worked in London, I occasionally got to take part in a security seminar in one of the hotels on the perimeter of Heathrow, but that was long ago and far away. I like to remember, though, that on one occasion I even won one of those little electronic organizer devices, which proved invaluable for playing solitaire during long journeys and attacks of constipation. I don’t remember what happened to it, though. Maybe I gave it away when I got an iGadget.

This is Edmund Hellmer’s statue of Johann Strauss II in the Vienna Stadtpark. The monument was erected in 1921. I don’t know the lady, but it proved impossible to get the statue without tourists. For some reason, I don’t have a picture of the airport, let alone the NH airport hotel.

Food for Thought

 [From a long-dormant series of travel sketches.]

En route to South Africa, our flight with BA was suddenly outsourced to Cathay Pacific. It wasn’t the worst flight I’ve ever experienced (hi, Ryanair!), but it had its peculiarities.

Drinking a Dom Pedro in Knysna

At the time I was waiting for the results of a coeliac test to come back and avoiding gluten, while my wife was sticking to a vegetarian diet. (I think it was a turf ‘n’ surf in Australia that finally threw us both off the vegetarian wagon, though we’ve ridden it from time to time sinceI.) It appears that gluten-free and vegetarian mean something different in Hong Kong. My gluten-free meal included a bread roll clearly identical to my wife’s, as well as a packet of gluten-rich crackers. However, I had flat water (boring!) instead of orange juice, fish and vegetables, and a fruit pie thing that was certainly not gluten-free. My wife had miscellaneous vegetables and no meat substitute, a roll, but no pie. There was clearly something they weren’t telling us about that fruit.

Breakfast was also interesting. At first, we were served the same as everyone else: eggs, cheese, ham, salad, a roll and yoghurt. After a while, though, someone must have found our orders. They turned up with my gluten-free provender and insisted on taking away the meal I’d already half eaten. Now I had rice and vegetables, and they replaced my already gluten-free yoghurt with orange juice, perhaps the one I wasn’t allowed for the previous meal. The roll, unfortunately, really was gluten-free: unfortunate, because if there was one thing that irked me about my period of eating totally gluten-free food*, it was the bread, which always had the flavour of cardboard – or what I imagine cardboard to taste like – and the moistness of a sirocco. However, my wife decided she didn’t want anything else, so I did get her (definitely gluten-free) yoghurt.

Food apart, the flight was mostly OK: the cabin crew seemed to have an average age of 14 but were very friendly, very giggly. One was chatted up in the middle of the night by a Scot in the opposite aisle seat, who then returned to conversation with his neighbour in the window seat, as he worked his way through glasses of wine (two at a time) and then his bottle of wine from the duty-free. In the end, we politely asked him to reduce the volume: he grumbled at me a bit, but subsided into sleep soon after.

The stopover at Windhoek was astounding. The descent was over many miles of scrub, and when we down, there was still nothing but scrub either side of us until we pulled before the terminal building. We were next to a 777 and a Cessna, the smallest number of aircraft I’ve ever seen at an international airport, and some of the insects were as large as the Cessna. I hope none of them took off at the same time.

No doubt we had a drink and maybe a snack, but what I remember most is treating myself to a leather safari-type hat: a ridiculous affectation, especially for someone who still sometimes pretended to be vegetarian**, but I was probably influenced by a friend who lives somewhere in the East but is Texan by nature, and always seems to look as if he’s about to lasso a longhorn.

*Apparently, I didn’t have coeliac disease, and I don’t display the more spectacular symptoms of gluten intolerance, so if I happen to visit you, feel free to offer me sandwiches and biscuits.

**A tip of the hat here to a former relative-in-law who despised me and my previous wife for being vegetarian, though she did buy us a sort of beginner’s guide to vegetarianism one Christmas that took the interesting position of including recipes for chicken and fish. I don’t know if it was meant as a way of leading us back towards carnivorism, or it was a subtle way of insulting us by assuming we didn’t know anything about vegetarian food, or that she thought that fish and chicken were vegetables, or that it simply meant that she hadn’t actually looked inside the book. (Actually, I do remember a Christmas – not necessarily the same one – where we were tempted less by nut loaf than by a rather interesting recipe for prawns in a vodka sauce, and declared prawns to be an honorary vegetable.)

My former relative’s finest hour, however, was probably when she ranted about how stupid vegetarians were if they wore leather shoes. Though at least she never pointed out that Hitler was a vegetarian, a common theme among people who somehow find vegetarians offensive.

David Harley