How is the name of the town Hingham, Massachusetts, pronounced?
In the UK, place names ending in "ham" are typically pronounced with a final /əm/
. For example, Birmingham, Buckingham, Clapham, Sandringham and Tottenham. (I haven't been able to find any counterexamples.)
However, in the USA, I don't know whether the pattern is consistent. I found the following:
- Bellingham is pronounced
\ˈbɛlɪŋˌhæm\
. - Framingham is pronounced
\ˈfreɪmɪŋˌhæm\
. - Bingham is pronounced
\ˈbɪŋəm\
.
(Sources: Collins English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster.)
So how is the name Hingham pronounced in the USA: \ˈhɪŋˌhæm\
or \ˈhɪŋˌəm\
? I have not been able to find the name in any of the sources I consulted (in addition to Collins and Merriam-Webser: Wikipedia, Longman Pronunciation Dictionary and the Oxford BBC Guide to Pronunciation.)
Solution 1:
I lived in Massachusetts for 27 years and did some house-hunting in Hingham, and everyone I ever heard say the name of that town pronounced it \ˈhɪŋəm\ .
Note that other two-syllable towns in Massachusetts ending in -ham follow the same pattern of a stressed followed by an unstressed syllable: Dedham, Needham, Raynham, Wareham. On the other hand, Waltham, where I worked for a few years, was always hollered out by the MBTA conductors as WalTHAM (wɔːl'θæm). Go figure.