Carolina Curious: Why is Winston-Salem's Buena Vista neighborhood pronounced 'BYOO-nuh' Vista?

The seemingly odd pronunciation of a popular Winston-Salem neighborhood, Buena Vista, has one of our listeners wondering why people say it that way.

In this edition of Carolina Curious, WFDD’s Amy Diaz talks to residents, a librarian and an expert in linguistics to find the answer. 

Sticking with traditions

The sun is out, and birds are chirping in the lush, picturesque neighborhood on Winston-Salem’s west side. With its tree-lined streets and Tudor and Renaissance-style homes on hills overlooking the rest of the city, its no wonder the neighborhood’s name translates to “Beautiful View.” 

But for lots of Winston-Salem locals, it's not pronounced “BWAY-nuh” Vista the way it’s said in Spanish. It’s pronounced "BYOO-nuh" Vista.

That took Matthew Mayers, who moved to the area in 2004 from California, by surprise. 

“It kind of struck me pretty um strongly when I came here and started hearing people saying, 'BYOO-nuh Vista'" Mayers said. "I also studied Spanish as my graduate work. So it was very remarkable, noteworthy, I guess.”

He wanted to know how this pronunciation came to be and why. So, I set out to find the answer. 

I started by visiting Buie’s Market, a grocery store and bar nestled in the neighborhood. The manager, Cassie Carpenter, who moved here from Illinois, had a similar story to Mayers. 

“I originally pronounced it Buena Vista, until I was corrected by the customers here to 'BYOO-nuh Vista,'" Carpenter said. 

I asked her if anybody ever gave her a reason why it’s pronounced like that. 

“No, no," Carpenter said, laughing. “That’s just how it is.”

And sure enough, as I asked the people visiting the store, I got similar answers. 

“I was born on BYOO-nuh Vista road, and I know that's not phonetically true, but it's what we've always said, if you're from North Carolina," said Will Nesbitt. 

He actually doesn’t live in Winston anymore; he’s just back in town visiting. But when he’s not in North Carolina, he’ll use the Spanish pronunciation to talk about his old neighborhood. 

“I code-switch when we come back. But like, wherever else we are in the world, it's 'BWAY-nuh,' right?” he said. 

Another customer, John Vogler, grew up saying “BYOO-nuh” too. He’s stuck with it, even though he says he has questioned that pronunciation himself. 

“I lived in Spain for like, three months, and I know the Spanish language, and it makes no sense that we call it 'BYOO-nuh,' but you gotta stick with the traditions," Vogler said. 

Judy Mount-Joy’s answer is a little more complicated.

“I say BWAY-nuh Vista because my husband was from California,” she said. 

But when they started a family here, she says …

“My kids grew up calling it BYOO-nuh Vista.” 

To figure out why this is, though, I needed to dig into the history of this neighborhood.

Exploring the archives

I called Grace May, with the Forsyth County Central Library. She works in the North Carolina collection and is sometimes called the “Genealogy Lady.” 

Before exploring the archives, she did some personal research. 

“I just randomly had lunch with my grandmother, who's 91. She moved to this area in 1958, and I asked her about it, and she said the whole time she’s lived here, it's been BYOO-nuh Vista," May said. "And she said, 'I've never known why, but that's just what everybody calls it.'”

May set out to learn more, too, digging through old newspaper articles and books. She told me some of the history of the neighborhood. 

“It was originally land owned by the Fries family, which is historically kind of an important family in the area, and they were a Moravian family," May said. 

She says the land was developed to be a neighborhood for upper-class residents. In newspaper archives from the early 1900s, that’s exactly how it’s advertised. 

“This one from 1919 says, 'Buena Vista is restricted to residents and to only high-class residents.' So, you know, it was developed specifically to be a part of town where the elite would go to live," May said. "And it ended up including, you know, the Hanes, the Grays, a lot of prominent families.”

She found another article from 1962 that says the neighborhood was named after the Mexican-American War battle of Buena Vista. But she couldn’t find any documentation of the “BYOO-nuh” pronunciation. 

That, to her, is telling.

“I think if it was kind of a point of like, ‘Well, we're going to call it BYOO-nuh Vista even though we know it's BWAY-nuh Vista, someone would have maybe spoken about that over the years, but it's never really been talked about,” May said. 

She has a couple of theories as to why people ended up pronouncing it that way, even if it wasn’t a deliberate decision. One, is that the name and pronunciation could stem from other places called Buena Vista around the country. 

May says there are four communities in North Carolina alone with that name, two of which predate the Winston-Salem neighborhood. She also found several advertisements in local newspapers from the early 1900s for a hotel in Buena Vista, Virginia.

There’s another one in Colorado that was established in the 1870s. It was pronounced that way on purpose to mimic the first syllable in the word “beautiful.” 

“It seems likely that maybe that name caught on, and perhaps the way they pronounced it in Colorado just became the way that white Americans decided to pronounce it," May said. 

Another idea is that the spelling of Buena may have led people to believe it was pronounced like a couple of other similarly spelled words. 

“There were popular girl names of Buena and Beulah. Beulah could often be spelled B, U, E, L, A, H, so I don't think it's crazy to think that they saw it in print and then assumed it was BYOO-nuh Vista instead of BWAY-nuh Vista," May said. 

Anglicization of words

North Carolina State University sociolinguistics professor Walt Wolfram says all of this might also have something to do with the demographics of Winston-Salem at the time. 

“It seems strange to us, you know, who in the world doesn't know the Spanish pronunciation of Bueno? OK, so that's kind of intriguing," Wolfram said. "But actually, you have to remember, when these things were named, there weren't Spanish people around. So it would be quite open to sort of anglicize its pronunciation.”

He says the reason “BYOO-nuh Vista” seems like a strange pronunciation to some people now is because of how prominent Spanish has become.

“But given the time, you know, and context, it's not surprising at all," Wolfram said. 

And he says the anglicization of words is not uncommon. 

When he lived in New Zealand, he says people pronounced filet mignon, "fil-LET" mignon. And in England, he says people say “duv-ETTE” cover, instead of duvet. 

“BYOO-nuh Vista," he suspects, is just another example of an anglicized pronunciation that was perpetuated. 

“And it becomes one of those oddities of sort of North Carolina place names, a lot of which you don't know how to pronounce unless you've been there," Wolfram said. 

He’s written a book called “Talkin’ Tar Heel: How Our Voices Tell the Story of North Carolina,” all about the unique regional, social and ethnic dialects of the state, and the ways people pronounce, and mispronounce, place names.

Like saying Bertie County like "Birdy" instead of "Ber-TEE." Or Robeson like "Robe-sun," instead of "ROB-is-son." 

“These things become sort of identifiers of locals and outsiders. And so they become quite indexical in that respect," Wolfram said. "An insider would say this, and an outsider would say this, and an insider would never say that."

So — BYOO-nuh or BWAY-nuh — you decide. But if you’re in the neighborhood, I think we can all agree, it is a pretty beautiful view, however you say it.