Creating an account only takes 20 seconds, and doesn’t require any personal info.

If you’ve got one already, please log in.🤝

Place name

From Teflpedia

A place name (/pleɪs neɪm/) or toponym (/tɒpənɪm/) is the name of a place, such as a country, region, city, town, county, village, or other geographical feature such as a hill, mountain, river, or celestial body such as a star, moon, planet, etc.

These are examples of proper nouns and are usually capitalised.

Additionally, there may be English names for foreign cities, or particular pronunciation of them that may differ from the local language.

The study of place names is called toponymy.

The pronunciation of English place names can be somewhat irregular, though there are rules. The most likely thing to catch learners out are the suffixes. The following suffixes are both (1) reasonably common and (2) irregular in pronunciation.

Ending Example(s) Pronunciation
-borough Loughborough, Peterborough /-brə/
-cester Leicester, Gloucester Last two syllables are merged /-stə/ or /-stər/ (rhotic)
-ford Oxford Vowel is reduced /-fəd/
-ham Birmingham, Nottingham H is silent; vowel is reduced /-əm/
-shire Cheshire Vowel is reduced /-ʃə/
-ton Southampton Vowel is reduced /-tən/
-mouth Portsmouth, Plymouth Vowel is reduced; /-məθ/
-worth Tamworth W may be silent after a consonant sound /-əθ/
-wick Berwick, Keswick W is usually silent after a consonant sound /-ɪk/,