I failed the Chumly Test when I came to live in London and mentioned Cad O’Gan Square and continue to fail it, most recently at Kenwood.
I pronounced Iveagh lvy and was swiftly corrected – Iver. At this point we were overheard by the Curator of Collections and Interiors at Kenwood who helpfully intervened to say the name is pronounced Ivy north of the Border. Actually people this side of the Irish Sea often struggle to pronounce Bellew although Tony Bellew, the boxer, has been a help in familiarising the name. For years I called the opera TurandO until tactfully corrected by an uncle that the final consonant is usually pronounced.
At least three people do not relish the observance of these shibboleths. A goddaughter and her parents pronounce their name SeaMore, not Seamer, Lord Harewood has asked to be called Hare-Wood not the traditional Harwood and the BBC Spanish correspondent has changed his name from Guy Hedgcock to Guy Hedgecoe. What’s in a name?
*****
I bought shares in the Aberdeen Asia Focus investment trust about twenty years ago in my SIPP, largely because a director thought it was a good bet.
Until now I have completely ignored it. My friend is no longer on the Board but I went fishing ages ago with one current director (whose first husband was Conyngham – another Chumly Test) and another is a member of The Irish Peers’ Association. I’d say both are pretty competent. Two years ago Aberdeen changed its name to Abrdn and this year Abrdn has taken a real beating with its Global Absolute Returns Strategy fund that has shrunk from £53 billion at its peak in 2016 to £1.4 billion now. They are closing the fund. I think Abrdn has a tendency to prioritise selling its funds to the punter over employing talented fund managers. I have more confidence in Baillie Gifford, name unchanged since it was founded in 1908. Crucially Baillie Gifford is wholly owned by partners working at the firm. This concentrates the mind.
Asia Focus, happily for me, is a different story. It has become the third largest holding in my SIPP, after McInroy & Wood and MP Evans. It hasn’t done badly: down 3.5% over one year; up 28% and 19% over three and five years. Somewhat incestuously 2.6% of the fund is invested in MP Evans.
Apropos Turandot: you were no doubt recalling Margot Asquith’s correcting Jean Harlow who repeatedly mispronounced her first name: “The ‘t’ is silent as in Harlow”.
A few years back at a book launch in Dublin, in the IGS rooms, a midlands peer asked, who are you,I having replied he says, is that with a u or an o , with a u says I , oh says he , and turning his back departed.
As a Bristolian I never really knew what a famous landmark was called. A well known “courting area”, should we meet at Cabot Tower with a T or Cabo without?
What did Sebastien call himself?
In Wodehouse, American’s always refer to a gentleman’s personal gentleman as a vally. There aren’t a lot still in employment, but valet parking (pronounce it vall-ay) is everywhere.
Sebastian, I think, would have called himself Caboto, as he had back home in Venice. The American Cabots, a prosperous and well-connected Massachusetts family, pronounce the t.