All Over The Map: Settling the debate over how to pronounce Hobart
Feb 28, 2020, 7:59 AM | Updated: 9:54 am
A topographic map from 1913 shows where Hobart is, but gives no clues as to how the name of the community was pronounced. (US Geological Survey)
(US Geological Survey)
Hobart marks yet another local area to join Mountlake Terrace and Des Moines on the list of places around here where a quiet yet persistent debate continues over the correct pronunciation of the community’s name.
Tim Green lives in Tacoma now, but he has deep roots in southeast King County.
“My great-great-grandparents were among the earliest pioneer settlers in what we now call Hobart,” Green said earlier this week at a meeting of the Maple Valley Historical Society in Maple Valley. The way Green said “Hobart,” it sounded like “HO-bert.”
“It’s become Hobart,” Green said, this time pronouncing it “HO-BART.”
“But in the early days, all of the local residents in the area called it ‘Hobart.'”
Again, this time, Green said “HO-bert.”
And Tim Green should know.
“My grandfather was born in Hobart 1899, his parents married there in 1891, and his grandparents were there by 1880,” Green said. “They were among the first three men who came to Maple Valley and gave it its name, but they settled farther to the east of Maple Valley.”
Green says Hobart was named for Garret Augustus Hobart. Hobart was vice president under President William McKinley; he died in office 1899, right around the same time that Hobart, Wash., was getting its first post office.
In his quest to get answers about the correct pronunciation of that long-ago vice-president’s name, Green even went searching in Hobart’s native state of New Jersey. He wasn’t able to find anyone who could say how Garret Hobart said his own name. KIRO Radio also searched this week for descendants of Hobart, but came up empty.
At least three other people – also old-timers – at the meeting in Maple Valley agreed with Tim Green and acknowledged that they, too, use what’s become a nearly forgotten pronunciation for Hobart. Green and the others agreed that the shift to “HO-BART” probably began sometime during or after World War II, as large numbers of new people moved to the area.
The Hobart here in King County isn’t the only Hobart on the planet. Hobart, Australia, dates to the early 18th century, and was named for Robert Hobart, the 4th Earl of Buckinghamshire. Down under, they say “HO-BART.”
It turns out there’s a Hobart a bit closer to home, too.
At the Hobart, Indiana Chamber of Commerce, Joann Metros set the record straight.
“I’m a native here, so I’ve grown up my entire life, and everybody calls it Hobert [‘ho-BERT’] who’s from here,” Metros said. “Anybody outside of Hobart always refers to it as Hobart [‘HO-BART’].”
Meanwhile, Danielle Hanna is a librarian at the Hobart Branch of the Lake County Library. She told me her town was named in the 19th century after founder George Earl’s brother Hobart Earl. As she spoke by phone to KIRO Radio earlier this week, library patrons eavesdropping on Hanna’s conversation weighed in.
“OK now, everybody here is arguing with me,” Hanna said. “They’re all behind me saying, ‘no, no,’ but my mother is 79 years old, and when she went to school in Hobart [‘HO-bert’] they always corrected them and said ‘Hobart,’ that it’s pronounced ‘HO-BART.’ But all the locals here say it’s pronounced ‘HO-bert.’”
A quick check of a trusted pronunciation guide to Washington state place names published by WSU in the 1960s adds even more confusion to the mix by claiming it’s “HOH-bahrt.”
Feeling lost? Maybe just wait a few decades, and “HO-bert” may once again become the right way to say Hobart in Washington, Indiana, and maybe even Australia.
