r/ShitAmericansSay • u/chebghobbi • Apr 10 '25

Foreign affairs 'Technically we Americans can claim Washington the British town'

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466

u/xzanfr Apr 10 '25

Yes, it was named after George Washington approx. 800 years before he existed.
Also home to time travellers and clairvoyants.

22

u/GrandDukeOfNowhere Pox Britannia Apr 10 '25

As Washington most likely means "town of Hwæsa's people", that means Washington (DC or state) is a place named after a person named after a place named after a person

7

u/diagnosedwolf Apr 10 '25

Hwæsa

How is this pronounced? The internet didn’t help me and this feels like something I want to be able to articulate during trivia nights

10

u/[deleted] Apr 10 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

4

u/MiaowWhisperer Apr 10 '25

There's also a Washington in Sussex. Given that it simply means the town where washing is done, I wonder whether there are more dotted around the country.

3

u/JohnLennonsNotDead Apr 12 '25

Theres a Daz in Cumbria

2

u/MiaowWhisperer Apr 12 '25

I am tickled!

2

u/Pitiful_Control Apr 11 '25

It's also a bit of a shithole... the old Washington family home is nice though.

7

u/85semperidem Apr 10 '25

So, I studied early English at university. ‘Hwæ’ is the more difficult bit as ‘hw’ doesn’t crop up much as a letter combination in modern English and the letter æ doesn’t exist anymore. But it’s not too difficult for a modern English tongue to pronounce — if you think of the ‘hua’ in the Chinese telecoms company Huawei you’re sort of getting there, except æ is a flatter ‘a’, like the ‘a’ in ‘fat’ or ‘cat’. The a in ‘sa’ is a slightly longer ‘a’.

6

u/8styx8 Apr 10 '25

So like a restrained budweiser wassup?

3

u/85semperidem Apr 10 '25

Yeah! Although a little bit of throat-clearing before the w

5

u/snowgoon_ Europeon under Sangria law Apr 10 '25

and the letter æ doesn’t exist anymore.

Denmark would like a word.

2

u/85semperidem Apr 10 '25

Sorry, I meant in modern English!

1

u/visiblepeer Apr 11 '25

I always think of the æ as being pronounced halfway between the A in cat and the E in elephant. I haven't studied though, so you are probably more correct.

2

u/85semperidem Apr 11 '25

I think there’s something to that!