For decades academics and residents have debated how to pronounce the word 'Magdalen'. The name has lent itself to a university college, a bridge, a church and two roads. But how should it really sound? PAUL HARRIS investigates...

College purists opt for 'Maudlin' and Voguish undergrads have called it 'Maggers'. Religious folk who tell you, "Pray, say it like the Saint", are also correct - if there can be such a thing in this pitfall of pronunciation.

The source of this bafflement: the word Magdalen. The Rev Hugh Wybrew, vicar of St Mary Magdalen Church, Oxford, said: bats on the side of the Saint.

"Mary Magdalen in the Middle Ages was one of Europe's favourite saints.

"My guess is that the pronunciation 'maudlin' is a university thing both here and at Cambridge.

"Certainly St Mary Magdalen has never been called Maudlin. There are people in Oxford who refer to the church as Maudlin, but I normally correct them." So, too, does 85-year-old Bill Jarvis, of Marston Street, Oxford. The former Magdalen College chef spent 46 years telling students not to mistake Magdalen for Maudlin when discussing the street or the church.

He said: "I think the pronunciation 'maudlin' came in when graduates were rather scholarly and got into the habit of speaking in a special way. If you read your Bible it is Mary Magdalen, and the street around there was named after the church.

"You never see St Mary Maudlin, do you?"

Well, you actually do if you delve into religious archives. The saint was a bigger star than Mary the Virgin in the 1400s when the Oxford college was founded by William of Waynflete, Master of Winchester College who had the ear of King Henry VI.

England, then piously Catholic, was dominated by Magdalen mania amid a revival of an Arthurian Age whose roots were in tales of the Holy Grail.

Today's college President, Mr Anthony Smith, explained: "In the late Middle Ages when this college was built she was a great saint and more churches and priories were dedicated to her than to Mary the Virgin.

"At that point the 'G in Magdalen' was not pronounced. The colleges were founded at roughly that time at the height of the cult of Mary Magdalen." She can be seen in statues around the college carrying an ointment box, which the Bible says she used to anoint the feet of Jesus Christ. She was also present at his Crucifixion and was said to have caught his blood in the very same box.

Whereupon our mystery unravels.

Mr Smith said: "The expression on the face of the statues was always one of sorrowful repentance - she was a reformed prostitute. Her look was described as a 'maudlin look'; that is how we know for certain the 'G' was not pronounced in her name."

So anything connected with the college has no 'G' - anything outside its remit is given one. You have 'Maudlin College' and 'Maudlin Road', with St Mary Magdalen Church and Magdalen Street pronounced with the 'g'. Simple, really.

*WHAT DO YOU THINK?: Write to The Editor, Oxford Mail, Osney Mead, Oxford OX2 OEJ or e-mail: nqonews@nqo.com

Story date: Wednesday 24 February

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