- Historian Alice Nash outside Amherst’s Jones Library, a repository of Nash family papers.
Why oh why do the people of Amherst, Massachusetts, pronounce their town’s name without the “h” and with the stress on the first syllable? The answer, if there is one, may be lost in the mists of “AM-erst’s” 250-year past, but townies agree with Wendy Kohler, chair of the history committee for the group celebrating Amherst’s birth in 1759. “No ‘h’ is part of our Amherst attitude,” she says, “It separates the people who live here from the people who don’t.”
For 18 years, new students and transplants have taken their pronunciation cues from Bob Paquette ’77, senior producer and morning host for the UMass Amherst-based National Public Radio affiliate WFCR. Paquette’s daily greeting, “This is WFCR, AM-erst,” has been familiar to listeners since 1991.
Paquette, who came to UMass from Dracut, learned the local pronunciation the embarrassing way. As a freshman newscaster on WMUA, he said “Am-HERST” and was subsequently corrected on air. Paquette has since strived to never utter the offending “h,” although some radio guests have. “It does happen,” he says, “and we all kind of cringe.”
UMass Amherst associate professor of history and Amherst resident Alice Nash adheres to the silent “h.” Nash is related to early settlers of the area, including John Nash, who signed the 1757 letter petitioning for Amherst to be named after Jeffery Amherst when the new town separated from Hadley. “My family has always said AM-erst,” says Nash. “In fact I can remember my grandfather [Herman B. Nash, who graduated from Mass Aggie in 1917] singing the Lord Jeffery Amherst song: Lord Jeffery AM-erst was a soldier of the king…”
Distinguished UMass Amherst linguistics professor John J. McCarthy brings his expertise to the name game. “The pronunciation of place names tends to vary a lot,” he says. “One reason is that the locals say the name so much that it becomes more and more reduced—syllables become unstressed or drop out entirely. That’s why so many place names are pronounced in a way that doesn’t match the spelling very well, such as Worcester.”
From incoming freshmen to incoming chancellors, most Amherst newcomers learn to drop the “h” soon after they sample their first Judie’s popover. However, certain Amherst visitors will not be corrected if they slip an “h” into the town’s name. Members of England’s John and Jennifer Battist-Amherst-Pryer family, descendants of Lord Jeffery Amherst himself, are attending the parade celebrating Amherst’s 250th anniversary this September. And they pronounce their family name “Am-HERST. “
