How to pronounce ancestors names.

[pharmaT]

Back to the Can't.
 I am from North Nottinghamshire and certainly say CARNT ( same as you PharmaT) to rhyme with Barn. Hence my thoughts on great grandma CANT. I also have ancestors called Calder and Laing, and until we went to Moray a few years ago I did not realise Calder was pronounced as Cawdor and Laing as Lane.

I don't say carnt I say can't to rhyme with rant.  I pronounce Laing more laing more like an 'ing's sound at the end. 

[KGarrad]

On a slightly different tack:

I have a commission to do some research on a family called Bridson.

Pronounced Bride-son

[larkspur]

Back to the Can't.
 I am from North Nottinghamshire and certainly say CARNT ( same as you PharmaT) to rhyme with Barn. Hence my thoughts on great grandma CANT. I also have ancestors called Calder and Laing, and until we went to Moray a few years ago I did not realise Calder was pronounced as Cawdor and Laing as Lane.

I don't say carnt I say can't to rhyme with rant.  I pronounce Laing more laing more like an 'ing's sound at the end.

Sorry mis read your post. More on my Laing discombobulations here! https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=762140.0

[Rena]

I came to a realisation this morning that some of the surnames in my tree I have only ever seen written down and not heard said out loud.  I have no idea how they pronounced their names and for some of them I can think of a few possibilities.  Anyone else got this?

For years I have been pronouncing the Sime/Syme, Midlothian born branch, in my father's maternal line with a long "i" as in "time". I have followed these two spellings back to late 1700s.  Then recently I was sorting through some of my late father's papers and came across his birth certificate and spied his mother's signature, which I believe would have reflected her names as they sounded.    His mother was born in the 1870s and she'd given some really big clues as to her heritage when she clearly wrote; "Agnes Darling Sim Mason Crum.

Of my mother's Norfolk ancestors, two branches live in different villages, one with the spelling "Smith" (Henry with daughter Pemela) and the other with the spelling "Smythe" (Samuel with daughter Sarah). I pronounce them differently but have no clue of whether those surnames differed in pronunciation.

[cristeen]

In terms of pronunciation I don't have too many tricky surnames but place names are a different story! Who knew that Quarmore should be pronounced Whammer, unless you are local of course?

[Andrew Tarr]

Accents in the south east have been mutated (I nearly wrote corrupted) by fashion and upper-class affectation over centuries. 

.. and there's me blaming the French influence in southern England, from such events as the Huguenots and escapees from the French revolution, for the posh "ah" in garage, bath, grass, etc.

We don't disagree, Rena.  A French influence would have been there too, as one contributor near to the south-east of England.  I'm not sure how much of that would be Huguenot.  Garage is French anyway, and I remember being taught to use that pronunciation, never the anglicised Garrij.  Maybe there is more French influence in the spelling, such as using -ise rather than the recommended -ize.

Trying to sound more civilised (higher-class) would have meant sounding more French anyway, ever since the Norman conquest.  I have a theory that the English class divide is just a continuation of that situation - the workers would have been serfs or villeins originally, and maybe proud of it?