misheard, mistyped and misunderstood: birmingham place name gaffes
The idea for these button badge mock-ups came as a result of a number of experiences since I moved to Birmingham. The theme: the oddities of interpretations of place names in Birmingham derived from typos, spell-check suggestions, mispronunciations and adolescent mischief.
Once upon a time, you could type ‘Perry Barr’ into a more decrepid version of Word (you know, the version that introduced that interfering paperclip who makes unwelcome appearances at inopportune moments), and dear old spellchecker would suggest ‘Perky Bra’ as a suitable alternative. I know of someone who wasn’t paying enough attention when using the spellcheck facility and inadvertantly replaced the text with the suggestion, much to the entertainment of the organisation who received the correspondence.
Telephone conversations are usually the worst culprits for these erronious word warps: having to explain that Acocks Green is a name and not a statement; discovering that saying the word Edgbaston is particularly troublesome if you have a heavy cold; Bournville being particularly tricky for some to hear.
Sometimes, speedily penning letters has equally entertaining results in terms of spellings. You’ll see this in the Kings Heath and Rubery badges.
The final misdemeanour: teenagers on a bus, who decided to rename Selly Oak.
Of course, the badges don’t reflect the places. What they do hopefully reflect is the ability of people to unknowingly twist local language and entertain others with it.
Please share any other place name gaffes you’ve encountered!
[...] Bloody great. [...]
[...] Graphiquillan blogs: The idea for these button badge mock-ups came as a result of a number of experiences since I moved to Birmingham. The theme: the oddities of interpretations of place names in Birmingham derived from typos, spell-check suggestions, mispronunciations and adolescent mischief. [...]
Super stuff! A few more….
Soddin’ cold feet (Sutton Coldfield)
Little ass turn (Little Aston)
Great bore (Great Barr)
Mo’s laid (Moseley)
Very common (Perry Common)
Hard end (Shard End)
Nude housecoat (New Oscott)
[...] Jon and Pete for finding this link for [...]
[...] reader suggestions Thanks to Pete, Jon and Nick for their unexpected coverage of the ‘misheard’ badges in Created in Birmingham, BiNS and Podnosh respectively. Seems there’s an underlying theme of [...]
Love it! King Sheath just has to be my personal favourite. Or A Cock’s Green … so many beauties to choose from! Vaguely related, I’m cobbling together a typographical map of Brum - perhaps I should scrap it and just do a misheard version?!
I couldn’t resist a few more…
Winsome gleam (Winston Green)
Juicy kumquat (Jewellery Quarter)
Driveways (Five Ways)
Spring roll (Spring Road)
Bloomin’ unintentionally (Birmingham University)
Wild steam (Wylde Green)
More feet (Moor Street)
Newt stream (New Street)
Gravy spill (Gravelly Hill)
Bold leer (Boldmere)
Beery word (Bearwood)
Andy’s burp (Handsworth)
Lung bodge (Longbridge)
Hardly a word (Yardley Wood)
and a couple of popular sayings too…
Pack of Rachmans (’Back of Rackhams’)
Run the wreck in (’Round the Wrekin’)
Beery word - love it! :)
And a few more from responses over at Created in Birmingham:
From Tony Taylor -
Ha! Born
Ties Leigh
SPAR Kill
Herding Tonne
!Chelle Done?
From Ben -
“I said I was going home to Halesowen the other night to a guy and he thought I’d said ‘Hell Zone’”
[...] of Misheard Birmingham memorabilia. Following on from the surprisingly positive responses regarding this post, I thought ‘what the ‘eck’, cleaned up the images and set up shop. You can blame [...]