how should one pronounce montreal? a historical and linguistic guide

How do you pronounce our city’s name?

One of my colleagues says “Mawn (rhymes with dawn) treaaaal.” I say “Mun (rhymes with sun) treall.” My Italian immigrant parents referred to the city as something like “Mont-Reaalé.” Some anglos say “Montréal,” French-style with an English accent. Purists would probably say the French version is the most accurate.

But is it? I wondered about the name’s origin after noticing how my colleague pronounces it.

According to the Centre d’histoire de Montreal, “In the 18th century, for no official reason, the name Montréal supplanted that of Ville-Marie. Up until then, the city was called, sometimes simultaneously, sometimes separately, Montréal and/or Ville-Marie.”

Ville-Marie was the name given to the settlement founded by Paul de Chomedey, sieur de Maisonneuve in 1642.

In a 1992 article (PDF) in the Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française, Jean Poirier of the Commission de toponymie du Québec dismissed suggestions the name has anything to do with the Archbishop of Monreale of Sicily or with Claude de Pontbriand, fils du seigneur de Montréal (France). Every now and then those theories stil surface, as they did in the Lonely Planet guide to Quebec (see clipping to the right).

Poirier’s research indicates the name clearly came from Mont Royal, named by Jacques Cartier in 1535. But how did it change from Mont Royal to Montréal, a name that first appeared four decades later in a book by French historian François de Belleforest?

Poirier noted that in the 16th century France, “real” and “royal” were used interchangeably. Belleforest was also influenced by a 1556 Italian book that recounted Cartier’s explorations, by Venetian geographer Giovanni Battista Ramusio. In that work, a map appears in which Mount Royal is referred to as “Monte Real” (see map at the top of this post).

This doesn’t completely solve the mystery.

Though the map was the creation of Venetian cartographer Giacomo Gastaldi, “real” isn’t actually the Italian translation of “royal,” Poirier noted. If he was translating to Italian, he would have used “reale” or “regale.” It’s unclear why he used “real” instead but Poirier suggests Gastaldi may have been influenced by a Spanish or Portuguese document.

My conclusion? We should continue to pronounce Montreal the way we always have. But every once in a while, try it with a French, Italian, Spanish or Portuguese accent. Perhaps my parents’ mangled Italo-franco version was the closest to the correct pronunciation.

– Andy Riga