> In many places, if you see a "weird" (as in non-English-seeming) place name, a reasonable pronunciation guess is to just assume it's from a Romance language

> In many places, if you see a "weird" (as in non-English-seeming) place name, a reasonable pronunciation guess is to just assume it's from a Romance language In New England at least you have three options: English, French (Canadian), or indigenous as mangled by a bunch of half-literate English or French speakers 200 years ago. As a result, it's never quite clear if you're dealing with vowels that went through the Great Vowel Shift that divides middle and modern English[0] or not. [0] I am not a linguist, cunning or otherwise. This is an approximation.