Derby and the rest

Why is Derby pronounced Darby in British English? I don’t know precisely, but I do know that er was once commonly pronounced as ar, so we have that pronunciation in such words as clerk, Berkshire, Berkley, Hertford, Kerr and sergeant* though the forms Barclay, Clark, Carr and Sargeant are found as surnames.

There is also a variant form of my own surname: Hervey is pronounced in the same way as Harvey. It is mentioned in Boswell’s Life of Johnson:

[Johnson] was well acquainted with Mr. Henry Hervey, one of the branches of the noble family of that name, who had been quartered at Lichfield as an officer of the army, and had at this time a house in London, where Johnson was frequently entertained, and had an opportunity of meeting genteel company.  Not very long before his death, he mentioned this, among other particulars of his life, which he was kindly communicating to me; and he described this early friend, ‘Harry Hervey,’ thus: ‘He was a vicious man, but very kind to me.  If you call a dog HERVEY, I shall love him.’

*While writing this I thought that I would look at the BBC web site to check that John Sargeant does spell his name with an a. He does. I also found this from Radio 4:

Detective Sargeant Cate Jackson has been honoured for her work on some of Britain 's most high profile criminal investigations.

Comments

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I remember when working on Sheffield station while a student, there was a parcel to be put aboard a train and my colleague wasn't sure by which route it should go. He plumped for a train via Derby. "Ah," said he, "we'll tek ahsen ter Derby", which he pronounced so as to rhyme with Kirby.

I'm not sure how the inhabitants of that city pronounce its name and will endeavour to find out next time I go there.

I think we southern over-sophisticates often make the mistake of thinking that how we pronounce a word is how everyone pronounces it.

For example, consider Shrewsbury. We pronounce the first syllable as though it rhymes with "toes" but the nearer you get to the town itself, the more often you hear it pronounced as it is spelt, "Shroosbury".