FW: Houston Street

[Frank Abate]

Re this name and what Grant B posted (cc'd below), the NYC "local" pron
serves as a shibboleth for NYCers.  Unlike the Van Wyck Expressway and a
couple of others, where there are variant prons even among "true" NYCers, it
seems to be generally regarded in NYC that if you don't know to say
"HOUSE-t at n" for the street, you must be unaware of things Gotham.  And of
course, the NYC Soho district is both an allusion (sort of) to the
similarly-named London district, and an acronym for SOuth of HOuston, as H
Street is the northern dividing line for NYC's Soho district -- sometimes
spelled SoHo, reflecting the acronym.

It is worth noting (again?) that, by default, Brits pron the name of the
Texas city as "HOOS-t at n".  There is a version of a blues number by the
(Birmingham-based) Spencer Davis Group, with Stevie Winwood doing vocals (at
the age of 15, btw; this was in the mid-60s), where he clearly pronounces
the city name this way.  There may be other occurrences of this pron from
the mouths of Brits in other blues songs.  Houston is mentioned in the
lyrics of a couple of blues songs that were widely covered.

FYI, Sam Houston, the eponymous dude for the Texas city, and the "founder"
of Texas as a republic, was the son of Moses Houston, who had the idea to go
down and start a republic in Texas, but got too old to carry it out, and
sent his son on this mission, from his deathbed (as the story goes).  Moses
was born in Durham, Connecticut (about 5 miles from where I am writing
this), and the house is still there, right on Main Street in the dead center
of town, with appropriate historic plaque out front.  I have not done the
research on the family pronunciation of the name, but there may be written
evidence from the early 1700s, if we're lucky.  That might reveal how the
pron for the city got started -- or show that it started later, some other
way.

I cannot speak to the Scottish pron of the family name, but I expect someone
else "out there" knows -- so (Bill Nicolaisen, or someone) please post, if
you do know this.

Frank Abate

********************


New York University Press claims this:

http://www.nyupress.org/product_info.php?products_id=2233

Houston Street: For William Houstoun, 1757-1812, of a prominent Georgia
family, who married a daughter of Manhattan landowner Nicholas Bayard
III. The Georgia provenance of the name accounts for its pronunciation
and spelling both of which distinguish it from the Texas city.


--
Grant Barrett
Editor, World New York
http://www.worldnewyork.org/
gbarrett at worldnewyork.org