8

Disclaimer: I'm no native speaker.

Thomas gets pronounced with a starting "T" (the "h" is silent), while Theodore with a "Th". What rule is followed here?

tchrist
  • 134,759
miku
  • 463
  • The mispronunciation that drove me crazy when I lived in England was pronouncing the name 'Thor' with the 'h', it's pronouned like 'Thomas'! I guess though it had something to do with the conversion of the runic spelling to Latin. It's weird though, because in Scandinavia, the day of the week before Friday, is Torsdag and thunder is torden. In England they put an 'h' in and spell and pronounce it as Thursday. Someone told me adding the 'h' common to the name Tor in Denmark, but, the 'h' is not pronounced, had something to do with the use of French in Denmark, when the'h' came into a lot of wor – Tor Schofield Jan 25 '19 at 01:58
  • Let me remark that we are pronouncing Thor "correctly" (or at least, with the consonant it had in Old Norse), while you are pronouncing it "wrong". See etymonline. – Peter Shor Jan 25 '19 at 04:32

5 Answers5

11

There is no rule at all. As Robusto mentioned, there isn't really any rule for pronouncing th, and even if there were it's common for names not to follow rules.

Thomas comes from the Aramaic t’om’a, while Theodore comes from the Greek Θεόδωρος (Theodōros), which is probably the reason for the difference in pronunciation. Eventhough the th in Thomas comes from the later Greek spelling, it's likely that the pronunciation remained from the original form.

Thomas
Theodore

Guffa
  • 9,561
  • @Jasper Loy: Thanks. I have a hard time getting that right. It doesn't help that pronounce and pronunciation are spelled differently either... – Guffa Jan 24 '11 at 02:24
  • 1
    @Guffa: Pronounce and pronunciation are pronounced differently, too. http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/5732/ – Jon Purdy Jan 24 '11 at 02:41
  • Hmm, this could be the cause, but it looks doubtful to me. Would this distinction have survived the various transliterations and borrowings through Latin, etc? There are other th 's that are pronounced like t 's, such as Thames: perhaps they have a similar background. – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Jan 24 '11 at 03:41
  • Note that thyme, which is as far as I know an old Greek word, is also pronounced like time. – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Jan 24 '11 at 03:47
  • And the ancient Greeks didn't pronounce a Θ like our English th ([θ]) either - more as an aspirated t ([tʰ]) than a voiceless dental fricative. – gpr Jan 24 '11 at 05:26
  • @Cerberus: Yes, you are right that a lot can have happened to the names. It might not be the original pronunciation that has survived, but it's surely the history of the names that decides their pronunciation. The name Thames comes from the Celtic name Tamesis via the Middle English Temese, which probably explains it's pronuciation. To be more certain about the reasons, you would of course have to study the exact history of each name. – Guffa Jan 24 '11 at 07:58
  • 2
    According to the wikipedia link you give, the pronunciation has been influenced by the French one. This explanation seems more likely than the conservation of the Aramaic one – Frédéric Grosshans Jan 24 '11 at 10:39
  • 1
    @Guffa: True, history is the key to English spelling v. pronunciation. – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Jan 24 '11 at 15:47
  • eventhough shouldn't it be even though? – ᴍᴀᴛᴛ ʙᴀᴋᴇʀ Sep 08 '17 at 09:32
8

Unfortunately, the rule is pretty much that you have to know how it it is pronounced for every single word in the English language that begins with th-. Especially for proper names.

Even then it won't help if you work with two women named Thalia, one of whom insists on her name being pronounced Talia and the other wants the lithpier version.

Oh, and by the way ... Theodore's nickname is Ted! And you thought English pronunciations ought to make sense. That's just ... adorable! :)

P.S. I'm not poking fun at you, but at our silly, unreasonable language.

Robusto
  • 151,571
2

From the great poem on English pronunciation The Chaos:

The th will surely trouble you

More than r, ch or w.

Say then these phonetic gems:

Thomas, thyme, Theresa, Thames.

Thompson, Chatham, Waltham, Streatham,

There are more but I forget 'em-

Wait! I've got it: Anthony,

Lighten your anxiety.

It was actually written by a Dutch teacher of English.

Cerberus - Reinstate Monica
  • 61,585
0

I once had an English trainer who taught us that proper nouns that start with Th should be pronounced with a silent h. Like Thomas = Tomas or Thailand = Tai-land. I don't know if it's really how it should be. I kind of adapted it but it doesn't really apply to all such words.

James Waldby - jwpat7
  • 66,660
redclover
  • 1
0

In Australia and the US over the last 30 years, the written language seems to have trumped traditional UK pronunciation. Standard Aus. and US, in my experience, is 'th' fricative, like the 'th' in 'that'. Older UK speakers, on the other hand, seem to be sticking with a clear 'T' plosive pronunciation. Note that shorter version used sometimes to be written 'Thom' but always, to my knowledge, pronounced 'Tom', with a clear plosive 'T'.

Warsaw Cormac
  • 1
  • You are used to people using the sound of "th" in "that" in the name "Thomas"? That seems very strange to me. – herisson May 29 '17 at 21:59