Shropshire Star

You say Shroosbury, I say Shrowsbury...

More than 6,000 people have now stepped in to join the debate about how Shrewsbury should be pronounced. Why not give your view?

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The Facebook site set up to argue "It's Shrewsbury not Shrowsbury" now has 6,183 members with 18 ongoing discussion topics and 114 photographs of the town loaded up.

The row about the pronunciation of the town continues to inspire debate with people from across the country having their say and airing their opinion.

  • Now it's your turn. Try ShropshireStar.com's absolutely, definitively, complete and utter (for the time being) 'Is it Shrews or Shrows?' poll at the bottom of this page.

One member of the group has put the results of a BBC survey up on the site showing that 70 per cent of people in the town call it Shroosbury, 25 per cent Shrowsbury and five per cent Shoosbury.

Mitch Bennett says that the Government spells it Shrewsbury so that is how it should be said and Mandy-Joanne Humphreys says that the pronunciation of Dewsbury also gives us a clue.

But many believe that both ways of saying the town's name is actually correct.

Dan Roberts says: "It is either or.

"Both are right for different reasons so anyone who has picked one over the other is ill-informed."

Some people even spell the different pronunciations in alternate ways with Shrowsbury also spelt Shroesbury by some.

Christa Brailsford adds: "They are both right.

"The pronunciation of Shroesbury derives from the old name of Scrobesberig and various other variations over hundreds of years.

"Shrewsbury is just another version – language changes and develops all the time."

Other groups have been set up on the social networking site arguing over the different pronunciation and also have hundreds of members.

An introductory message on one site says the former Shrewsbury and Atcham Borough Council website carried information about the name.

It apparently said: "It was only as bureaucracy increased in the 17th century that a single variation of the name was adopted for legal purposes which is essentially the Shrewsbury we know today – note that in middle English, Shrew was pronounced Shrow – although no doubt the majority of people wrote it phonetically as they always had done."

By Rhea Parsons