Checkmate, Chuck. 👑
Edit: Given the number of downvotes I’m getting, I’m guessing a lot of people have just learned that they’ve been pronouncing St. John wrong. Don’t beat yourselves up. It’s not like it’s a terribly common name.
It may be a case of laziness which has started creating a local dialect. This is one of the ways living languages change over time, people start sluring words and sounds together until there is almost nothing left of the original words and there is a new word in their place.
There is also the wedding scene of Bernard and Lydia in the 1997 movie Four weddings and a funeral. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYzQFudZ70k
Not a single person in my insane number of years has ever said sinjin
You don’t live in Britain where:
- This is a name people have.
- It’s pronounced like that.
I live near a village called St John’s Town of Dalry and no one says sinjin nor have I heard anyone’s name referred to that way.
Am in UK, and yeah, I’ve definitely heard it pronounced that way, sometimes combined with a second name, eg St John-Smith = Sinjin-Smith
I think it’s a thing posh people use sometimes.
Lived there for years and years. Never heard it pronounced that way. Strange
Yup, Sinjin is definitely a thing.
Source: I know a St. John and he told me the right way to pronounce his name is indeed “Sinjin”
We don’t as far as I know. St John is usually pronounced Saint John. Though English is weird and you might have come across a local pronunciation. Do you know where abouts in the UK that one comes from?
Roger Moore pronounced his alias St John Smythe as “Sinjun Smythe” in “A View To A Kill”
The definitive answer :-)
Oh no not in Utica
Perhaps not precisely “sinjin”. Wikipedia gives the IPA as /ˈsɪndʒɪn/ or /-ʒən/ where the ʒ is the g in beige or the s in pleasure so it’s a bit more of a zh sound than a j sound: “sinzhin”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_John_(name) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/English
Though the English
isare weirdLocal names in Britain do my head in
I am english, in the UK. I have never heard someone say sinjin instead of saint john. The only thing I can imagine is a local accent? But id think its more like sint jin (sint jawn?)
That’s not how I’ve heard it pronounced. Not in the north at least. The T is mute. It’s “sinjin” (rhymes with Ken).
Ive never heard of Sinjin.
“ It can be pronounced…” is not the same as, “Is often pronounced”
I didn’t really say either of those, at least in the post. What’s your point?
No, but you said “why do the English pronounce” with no qualification that it’s neither the only way nor the most common way.
You’re right that it does happen, but your title implies it’s the sole or dominant pronunciation.
Who has a first name of St John?
In Vancouver, Canada, we have a journalist named St. John Alexander who pronounces his first name as “Sinjin.” I heard him say it on TV and it sounded weird. His profile even mentions it.
He’s often asked about his name. St. John is originally British and is pronounced “Sinjin.” His parents discovered it in Charlotte Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre.
Pronounced Janer, I assume.
From Wikipedia St John Pettifor Catchpool (1890–1971), English Quaker relief worker St. John Ellis (1964–2005), British Rugby League player St John Ervine (1883-1971), Irish writer St John Groser (1890-1966), Anglican priest and Christian socialist St John Hornby (1867–1946), British businessman St John Horsfall (1910-1949), British motor racing driver St John Brodrick, 1st Earl of Midleton (1856–1942), British politician St John O’Neill (1741–1790), Irish MP for Randalstown Saint-John Perse, pseudonym of Alexis Leger (1887–1975), French poet and diplomat St John Philby (1885–1960), British civil servant and explorer in Arabia
Weird. I never would have guessed anyone was named that.
I grew up in Britain no one I knew says sinjin, but Sinclair,warrik (Warwick) etc were the norm
