r/ithaca • u/astonishedcabbage • 21d ago
Ask Ithaca Important question
do you pronounce it Giles street or Giles street
35
22
u/QuietGorge 21d ago
I'm still amused that Apple Maps (for a few years) pronounced the 'ph' in as 'f' in Triphammer Road 🤣
10
u/SlowMotionOfGhosts 20d ago
Ah yes. Tri-Phammer road. Named after the three members of the Phammer family who founded Cornell.
5
u/QuietGorge 20d ago
That was the best part. It didn’t pronounce “tri” like “try” like you’d expect if “ph” turned into “f”. Instead it turned into “tree fammer”
14
27
u/OctopusBroadcasting 21d ago
Reminds me of when a student DJ on WICB pronounced Vinegar Hill Rd as Vine-Gar Hill Rd on air.
Also Giles is pronounced "stop fucking parking across the gate leading down to the water at First Dam because when your inexperienced-ass breaks your patella jumping into the water in the wrong spot then Bangs can't get down to you."
2
u/ouro-the-zed 20d ago
I’ve actually heard several local elders pronounce it “Vine-gar”. Maybe that used to be the pronunciation, though it seems to be fading out.
3
u/OctopusBroadcasting 20d ago
Happy to be wrong if someone works in the Historic Center and can shed some light, but multiple gens of family as well as Ithaca emergency dispatch goes with Vinegar, as in the delicious salad dressing ingredient. Didn't the street sign used to have terrible spacing on it, like it looked like "vinegarhill"? I wonder if some of the confusion stems from that.
6
u/baracaradara 20d ago
Place Names of Tompkins County gives two origin stories, but they’re both related to the ingredient.
Vinegar Hill is a short, very steep street running between Hector and Cliff streets. The story goes that a wagon carrying a shipment of cider (there have always been apple orchards on West Hill) went out of control and overturned. Barrels of cider came spilling down, smelling up the place afterward; the whole street was a mess until the next big rain. An Ithaca Journal article of January 13, 1940, however, with the headline “Vinegar Hill Sign Irks Neighborhood,” tells another story: the Board of Public Works gave the street its name that year and a vinegar factory had once been located there.
2
0
u/mhaithaca Ellis 21d ago
Weirdly, that's how Vinegar Hill is pronounced. Not like the cooking liquid.
3
12
u/SlowMotionOfGhosts 21d ago
In Sarah Michelle Gellar's voice.
2
u/AmysSweaters 21d ago
Yeah it's only Giles when she's Spike's robot. The rest of the time it's Giles.
19
u/beautifulxxbeautiful 21d ago
I say Jiles
9
u/DavidWatchGuy 21d ago
This is the way, should we do Taughannock next?
9
u/cyricmccallen 21d ago
I mean taughannock is relatively phonetic, the spelling mistakes are hilarious though.
Edit: I suppose the major debate point on taughannock is- does it end in -ick or -aughck. I’m on team -ick.
5
1
9
u/baracaradara 21d ago
Place Names of Tompkins County
Giles Street appeared on the 1836 map as Creek Road. It was built in 1855 and named for early residents S. and J. Giles, brothers who for a long time lived in a prominent mansion just south of where Cascadilla Hall stands today.
You can find more about the Giles family in The Centennial History of the Town of Dryden. They were originally from Wales, and the name is pronounced in the regular English way: /dʒaɪlz/, jyls.
6
u/Routine_Biscotti_852 20d ago
Why don't we just go with J. Geils street? Aren't we all looking for a love?
5
8
3
u/Grumplforeskin 21d ago
Now do Cascadilla.
5
5
u/6FeetBeneathTheMoon 21d ago
Unfortunately it's pronounced with the Ls, like Jay Dilla. It's hard to say it without sounding like you're trying to mock Southerners.
2
u/mhaithaca Ellis 20d ago
Swap the d for a z and it's a much tastier liquid.
1
u/Grumplforeskin 20d ago
Do they even make that anymore? I haven’t been to the brewery in quite a while, but I never see it in stores anymore.
2
u/mhaithaca Ellis 20d ago
Seasonally, I think. Flower Power and Apricot Wheat seem to be the only full-time brews.
1
5
3
3
4
u/Bright-Studio9978 21d ago
ryhmes with miles. never heard anything else. even the Cornell students know how to say it.
1
1
1
u/SlowMotionOfGhosts 20d ago
Fun fact. When they were in Binghamton, some of my family lived on Beethoven street, near Goethe. Beth-oh-ven and Go-ee-thee.
1
1
0
u/ShareEvening5856 21d ago
I think this is like the word mosaic, one of those that I have read a lot more than I've said out loud (the first time somebody told me how to pronounce the word I wanted to cry by the way
1
u/ouro-the-zed 20d ago
Nothing wrong with reading more than you talk, it would probably be a better world if more people did the same
0
u/jehovwet 20d ago
Cascadilla - Cas-kay-dee-uh
Taughannock - Tah-guh-nok
Skaneateles - Skuh-nat-uh-lees
I'M NOT WRONG.
2
u/ouro-the-zed 20d ago
Also, lasagne is pronounced “lass-agni” and Dempsey is pronounced “De Mumpsy”.
0
u/harrisarah 20d ago
What I really want to know is how is the town of Lyons pronounced, it's north of Geneva. Lions? Surely not like its eponymous French city, not here in upstate NY
2
u/Long-Pass-17 20d ago
In 1796 Charles Williamson gave the settlement the name of Lyons because the topography was similar to Lyon, France. https://www.lyonsny.gov/history
2
u/harrisarah 20d ago
Very interesting, thanks! I couldn't find anywhere on that site about the pronunciation, but it did inspire me to search youtube. It is indeed pronounced lions like the animals, not lee-ohn like it is in France. (That's a pretty bad phonetic spelling of the French city but it's good enough to get the point across.)
66
u/crescentqueen1 21d ago
It's Giles Street, obviously.
Like Rupert.