Houston Street

[Joan Hall]

My birth name is Houston (house-ton), and I've always assumed that Sam's
folks just didn't take part in the GVS.  (Atlanta has a Houston (house-ton)
Mill Road.)


At 07:02 PM 2/1/2003 -0600, you wrote:
>I don't see what the "Georgia provenance" of the name has to do with it.
>Sam Houston for whom the city was named was a native of Virginia. His
>family was of Scots-Irish origins (according to the Handbook of Texas
>Online) so maybe the /u/ in Houston represents a non-Great Vowel Shifted
>form. Was William Houstoun's family from southern England or somewhere
>else where the GVS might have turned /u/ to /aw/?
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From:   Grant Barrett [mailto:gbarrett at WORLDNEWYORK.ORG]
>Sent:   Sat 2/1/2003 10:45 AM
>To:     ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Cc:
>Subject:             Houston Street
>
>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