Man lobbies for Scottish pronunciation of Pittsburgh
Before Pittsburgh City Council could get down to regular business on Wednesday, it heard a proposal from out of the past from a man who asked it to do something about the way people pronounce the city’s name.
The man wasn’t anyone at the table: It was Robert Thomson, who with his Scottish accent, walked up to the podium during public comment to tell council that we’re saying “Pittsburgh” all wrong. And no, he didn’t mean the “Pixburgh” pronunciation.
Mr. Thomson, of Freedom, is
lobbying for more of a “Pittsboro” — or more precisely Pitts-BUR-uh —pronunciation, mimicking the proper Scottish manner of saying Edinburgh.
His argument: The founder of Pittsburgh, Gen. John Forbes, was a Scot, and he intended it to be pronounced that way.
This isn’t his first time around making the argument. Councilman Anthony Coghill, driven by his own ancestry — “My Scottish roots kind of got me into this,” he said — encouraged Mr. Thomson to make his argument in council chambers.
“He’s very passionate about it, and I’m not sure of all his reasons. I said, ‘Why don’t you come down and publicly speak?’ Obviously he’s on a mission,” Mr. Coghill said.
In a 1758 letter, Gen. Forbes first referred to the area as “Pittsbourgh” and probably pronounced it “Pittsboro” in his lowland Scottish accent.
But the general’s troops had a variety of ethnic backgrounds. Some were Highland Scots, Germans and Englishmen who would pronounce the name differently, according to Andy Masich, CEO and president of the Heinz History Center in the Strip District. Those soldiers and the German immigrants who populated Pennsylvania early on probably changed Gen. Forbes’ “Pittsboro” to the modern “Pittsburgh.”
Gen. Forbes wasn’t consistent with his spelling either, changing from “Pittsbourgh” to “Pittsburg” until he settled on the current Pittsburgh.
If the pronunciation ever officially changed, would the spelling change, too?
There’s already a Pittsboro. It’s a North Carolina town with a population of 4,221. It was named after William Pitt the younger, the son of Pittsburgh’s namesake William Pitt of Chatham. Changing the name could add even more confusion for Pittsboro’s mayor, Cindy Perry, who is sometimes misheard during introductions.
“I tell people I’m the mayor of Pittsboro, and they say, ‘Oh, Pittsburgh! That’s quite a big town to be mayor of,’” Ms. Perry said Wednesday.
But she assured that there wouldn’t be any hard feelings if Pittsburgh ever goes through with the pronunciation change. “I think if you all want to change [the pronunciation], I have nothing to say about that except, let the people speak.”
In Mr. Masich’s view, both the Scottish and the German pronunciations were valid from the beginning.
“I think the real answer to this is, do we want to go down this road? Are we going to say ‘Ver-sigh’ instead of Versailles?” Mr. Masich asked about the Allegheny County borough.
“If we really want to go back and figure out the language of origin and figure out how it was originally pronounced, we’re going to open a can of worms,” he continued. “Pittsburghers have such a deep history of mispronouncing things, why change now?”