The Story Behind Manchaca Rd misspelling/pronunciation (Austin, Weir: home, high school)

[austin-steve]

Oh no, not another pronunciation thread. But this is a good story with a lot of detail.

Jim Swift at KXAN investigated how Menchaca came to be misspelled and mispronounced as Manchaca (Manshack) and why a retired Judge is trying to get it corrected.

Here is the story:
Retired judge condemns misspelled name | kxan.com

Here is the Facebook Page "Justice for Menchaca":
Justice for Menchaca | Facebook

[OpenD]

Do you think he'll autograph a copy of "Man of La Mancha" for me?

Gotta get me one of those "Justice for Menchaca" stickers to go next to my "Keep Austin Weird" sticker.

I wish somebody would get that fired up over correcting all the menus that say "with au jus," which means "with with juice." Now THAT would be a contribution to linguistic accuracy!

[TexasHorseLady]

I was just this minute watching the tail end of that - it ended as I pulled up this thread!

Correcting, at the instigation of the actual family, a misspelling makes sense. After all, we pronounce Mueller "Miller" because that's the way the family says it.

Other than that, someone has way too much time on his hands now that he's retired, seems to me. The research is all well and good (if he can document it all). Seems to me that he's just looking for some "sinister" reason for something that there's a much simpler (by his own words, come to that) explanation for just to give himself a windmill to tilt at.

[die Eichkatze]

If they want to raise private money to have all this changed, then more power to them. I think the city has more pressing things to worry about and pay for...
I'm still pronouncing it "man-shack" no matter what they do...

[10scoachrick]

Originally Posted by TexasHorseLady

I was just this minute watching the tail end of that - it ended as I pulled up this thread!

Correcting, at the instigation of the actual family, a misspelling makes sense. After all, we pronounce Mueller "Miller" because that's the way the family says it.

Other than that, someone has way too much time on his hands now that he's retired, seems to me. The research is all well and good (if he can document it all). Seems to me that he's just looking for some "sinister" reason for something that there's a much simpler (by his own words, come to that) explanation for just to give himself a windmill to tilt at.

EXCEPT for those two Austin natives who lead bike rides to Mueller every few weeks . I've mentioned them before...even THEY don't agree on the pronunciation . Mee-yew-luhr, Muh-ler, Mill-er, tomato, potato .

PLEASE don't let that judge mess with PARMER Lane!

[BevoLJ]

Wow interesting. I never knew that. Thank you for sharing it.

Though it reminded me of this, at least in the way it was being reported. lol

[ScoPro]

Same for Peyton Gin Road by Lanier High School in north Austin.

Sometime in the 1960s the City paved the road and put up street signs that were misspelled. The Payton family members in the area were somewhat chagrined, IIRC.

One of my sons worked in the City of Austin sign shop for several months in the mid-nineties - he was the only literate one there so he was assigned to letter the signs.

[TexasHorseLady]

I have to say I have a hard time having much sympathy with this, as a genealogist being familiar with how these things happen over time.

And, heck, my husband's father's family's original family name was Coulon de Villier, and his last name is now Jumonville (misspelled French place name) from the place they came from in France originally. On his mother's mother's side, there are ancestors who took Welsh names even though they were born and bred in Georgia (Cherokee). There's a lot worse things than an "a" instead of an "e".

[OpenD]

Originally Posted by TexasHorseLady

I have to say I have a hard time having much sympathy with this, as a genealogist being familiar with how these things happen over time.

Over time? I've got ancestors on my father's line whose name was spelled 4 different ways that I'm aware of in a single lifetime. Once on a christening record, another on marriage license, another on military records, and still another on death record. Folks were not so particular about the spelling of their names until Homeland Security came along.

And pronunciations? Yee haw. When my mother's family moved from the Atlantic South to the Midwest when she was a teenager, her dad gave them all a new pronunciation to use for their family name. And when I went with her back to her birthplace to visit cousins, I found out those still living there pronounced the family name a different way. And the 200 year old village named after their clan pronounces it yet another way.

But wait... there's more... when I did some advanced genealogical digging in Europe, I found that yet another spelling was used in my father's family before coming to the colonies (in 1630), and that a different spelling and pronunciation was used in my mother's family before they sailed for the American colonies in 1740.

So while I admire the Judge's scholarship, I wish he would devote his energies to something that would actually make a difference in people's lives... and that people might actually care about.

[scm53]

When he gets done on that, he can attack the next "big" city up the road from my Mother's home town.

Most of the folks who live there call it Ruh-feer-e-o. Needless to say, it ain't spelled like that!