> Robert Albert wrote: > > Having studied German, but not being a native speaker, I am perplexed > and confused by surnames and village names in German that end in the > letters "OW". The "W" it is my understanding is pronounced with the > sound of a "v". Is this correct, and if so, how do you then pronounce > the following towns and names??? > > Alt Polchow > Grantzow > Warsow > Gramelow > Pinnow > > The reason I ask this, is that the surname Pinnow in early church > records in Alt Polchow is recorded as PINNAU. This is very similar to > the pronunciation of the people who carry this name that are > descendants of this family here in the US. They pronounce it > phonetically {pin-no}, or possibly {pin-now}, but never {pin-nov} or > {pin-noff}. It's fully correct. > ... > I would be greatly appreciative if you could clear up this question > for me. If for some reason there is a grammatical exception to the > general rule of the sound of the letter "W" I would like to know. I > just want to pronounce the words as they would have been pronounced > back in Germany. If you find a German location name ending of "ow" you can be rather sure that it is in Prussia or one of the both Mecklenburg duchies. Within the borders of Prussia the -ow names almost exclusively occur in the provinces of Brandenburg, Pomerania, West Prussia an Posen. All these regions are east of the Elbe river, where slaw tribes settled after the great European migration of the peoples. When the Saxons, coming from northwest Germany, conquered these regions, the native population was not killed or displaced but melted and merged with the Germanic arrivals. Many slavic location names (and surnames) were preserved in a modificated form but with typical slaw endings like -in or -ow. The German pronounciation is not -ov, similar to the English manner it sounds like a long "o" (without the "w" at the end). You must pronounce the name "Pinnow" like "Pinno" or "Pinnoh", the other mentioned villages the same way. The ending -in (like Berlin) is spoken long, in English transcription: not -in but -een. The same rules are valid for surnames with -ow or -in at the end. Most Germans know that, but this type of names is a special phenomenon of north east Germany. Another way of transforming Slavic names for German tongues was to change the ending -ow (in slaw languages spoken -off) to the more German looking -au. For instance Moscow is in German Moskau. Many locations everywhere in Germany are ending of -au, but if they are in the east-of-Elbe regions it may be that the name comes from a former -ow village. Therefore it is good possible that the same town or surname once is written Pinnau and at other times as Pinnow. * Dieter