The mysterious, unenunciated "w" in the "-wich" of English place names

Solution 1:

The "-wich" in Norwich and others comes from Old English wic (pronounced like witch):

wíc [] n (-es/-), f (-e/-a) dwelling-place, lodging, habitation, house, mansion; village, town; pl entrenchments, camp, castle, fortress; street, lane; bay, creek

Sometimes the "-wic" is shortened beyond even the "-ich" sound we're so familiar with. York, for example, was originally called Eoforwic (pron. eyovorwich).

Wic in Old English is also similar to vik in Old Norse, and there is some speculation that the word Viking itself referred to the penchant of those folk to go off a-viking, i.e. sacking towns.

Solution 2:

The -wich suffix comes from Old English wīc, meaning ‘trading center’ or ‘harbor’, so the w certainly wasn't 'added later'.

It's quite normal for place/family names to have 'awkward' phonemes dropped from pronunciation, or massively distorted.

I'd guess this is partly because people who live further away from the location or family seat may have different accents, and thus may find it difficult to pronounce names exactly as the 'locals' do.

Solution 3:

The original word's pronunciations have been explained by the two previous users, but I would just like to add, that the "w" was dropped as a result of elision, which is just a phonological omission, or a letter that has been dropped, muted, or slurred over i.e."Vegetable" is pronounced without the second 'e'. or "McKenzie" pronounced "M'Kenzie"

It also has epenthesis, which is the addition of a vowel or consonant, in this case, the 'r' instead of the 'w'. So, they took away the 'w', and just put 'r' in. This is all for ease of pronunciation, and happens all the time in English speech.

The pronunciation given in this dictionary seems to indicate that there are people who pronounce it without any elision or epenthesis:

nawr-wich