All of our ham towns

I once stopped in their little historical society building specifically to ask how they prefer the name to be pronounced. They said the correct pronunciation is like "Peter's-Ham"

Never call it "Peter-Sham"

Petersham were Greenwich, pronounced “green witch” (which makes me wonder if the one in Connecticut or the ones in Rhode Island (East and West) were ever pronounced like that before they got snooty) and Dana, pronounced “Danna”. They were among the four towns disincorporated to make way for the Quabbin Reservoir.

Petersham were Greenwich, pronounced “green witch” (which makes me wonder if the one in Connecticut or the ones in Rhode Island (East and West) were ever pronounced like that before they got snooty) and Dana, pronounced “Danna”. They were among the four towns disincorporated to make way for the Quabbin Reservoir.

I'm there often. Check out Tweedo's.

It's also home to a historic piano museum which is kinda neat.

There's also Cushing Academy which is a boarding school with a nice campus.

Cummington is cool town too. Rachel Maddow has a home there or so I've read. Excellent cycling if you are Ok with hills and dirt roads. Pretty farm country. It's like being in VT.

has a mineral named after it, cummingtonite.

The midwestern wife of a family member one said she went shopping in Deed-ham. One of many, many little cultural oddities.

Yeah, I'm in Wakefield, have friends in Stoneham and know plenty of people that were born and raised there. Definitely in dispute, leaning towards ham, not um.

Growing up in Melrose, I never heard it pronounced any way but "umm." It wasn't until I moved to Medford as an adult that I heard "HAM."

track pronouncing it RAIN-um Park, which grated on my eight-year-old ears. The lyrics went something like:

"Go greyhound racing at Raynham Park
Nightime racing at Raynham Park
[something something something]
[something something] starting at eight
Daily Double, lots of fun for you you you
Join the win crowd!"

One could explain the odd pronunciation because the jingle wasn't written or recorded by locals, or merely that RAIN-um scanned better in the song's meter than RAIN-HAM, c.f., the current jingle for a tankless water heater brand: "Count on na-VEE-un" when the spoken brand is NA-vee-un.

I have better recall of the radio jingle for Taunton Dog Track, as it was a tradition (for reasons nobody can recall) for me and a fellow wide receiver to sing it on the team bus to away high school football games, which always got a huge hoot and holler from our teammates. Weird, I know.

Is this really sufficient data though? I mean, I'm not doubting at all that you're from there and that's how you've always said it.

But we're talking about a region in which people who have lived in a neighborhood for several generations can vary in terms of how they pronounce a street name (often depending on class, ethnicity, religion, schools attended, etc.) I have friends who have siblings who pronounce their town or neighborhood differently, and will say things like "yeah, my sister uses more of the townie pronunciation; we went to different schools." I know families in which mom's side and dad's side (both native English speakers from this region) say their kids' names differently. Or people who have two different pronunciations of their last name within the family.

On the Twitter thread, it mentions calling the municipality's government and/or historical society and asking. But that still only gets you data from how that one person says it, which could be dependent on age, culture, etc. A few of the towns were originally one way on the first version of the map due to how the employee said it, but people came into the thread saying they're from there and it's said a different way or both ways.

Wanna play a fun game? Get a group of your favorite Britons (or "Queens English Speakers"), hand them a printed list of Massachusetts town names. Have them say each one. 9 times out of 10, they get it correct. It'll sound a bit odd surrounded by words using a brit accent, but the town name will be spot on.

The only ones that didn't were the same were towns that ended in -bury. (i.e. Glastonbury). Britons say "bury" (like I will bury you after you die). We tend to say "berry" instead.

Coworkers in my former's London office had a lot of fun over lunch one day pronouncing Massachusetts town names.

In 2001 or so I worked at a place where many of us took that commuter rail line. When people would discuss which conductors did and did not tend to collect fares for short trips between two adjacent suburban stops, they would mention "the guy who pronounces Waltham with a space in it."

The two adjoining towns are officially spelled Attleboro and North Attleborough. Really.

I believe Attleboro is the only town officially spelled as "-boro".