2963: Why Thames has an H Jan 31, 2025

The famous River Thames in London is famously not pronounced how it looks, but unlike a great many place names throughout Britain that do not look at all how they are actually pronounced, this was somewhat one purpose.

Normally, TH- represents the sounds /θ/ as in ‘thin’ or /ð/ as in ‘than’, but here is it /t/, except in the Thames of Connecticut where it is in fact /θeɪmz/, as it appears. In words that English takes from Greek, there is usually the /θ/ sound where indeed the letter θ appears, but that didn’t stop Middle English writers assuming that the then-‘Temese’ (or also Tames) was of Greek origin, and thus added an <H>. 

What makes this case particularly unusual is that normally when an <H> was added, it did change how people spoke. For instance, ‘herb’ had its <H> added later to connect it with Latin and ‘author’ never had an H, even in Latin, but was assumed to have had. This did not happen with ‘Thames’ of course, except perhaps if you live in New London, Connecticut.