Is It Thame or Thames?

Is the Oxfordshire town of Thame, Thames as well?  Their local paper seems to think so with their advert on their Home Page promoting South Oxfordshire District Council's revised parking charges a few months ago, with some being Free after 2PM on Saturdays.

The advert tells us that two of them in Thames ( sic) are free as above.  It then follows up with---see tarriff (sic) board for detials (sic).

To clarify, the local paper spells its name correctly as Thame; the River Thame runs past the town of Thame and south of Dorchester-on-Thames ( not Thame and not to be confused with Dorchester, Dorset) it joins up with the better known River Thames.

The town's name pronounced as in "tame", whilst the Thames is pronounced as in "temz" as the Anglo-Saxons seemed to make up their pronounciations as they went along.

Confused? You won't be after reading the local paper's adverts--(as long as it remains there)

 http://www.thametoday.co.uk/

Similarly confusing is the fact that the stretch of the Thames above Iffley Lock up to the city of Oxford is called the Isis. This is possibly derived from the Latin name of the Thames, the Tamesis.

Incidentally, the motto of Thames Valley Police is Sit pax in valle Tamesis - Let there be peace in the Thames Valley.

Oh dear, as I get older I accumulate more useless information ! 

Well, I grew up living next to Thame and certainly have never heard it called Thames (as in tames) before. 

Also, The Thame River runs through Wheatley but not The River Thames.  

Here's a nice little web page all about Thame.

http://www.thame.net/history.asp 

Thame also gets the remnamts of St. Giles Fair (or it did once upon a time) which should be coming up sometime now.

The link should work now!

Thanks James. I thought 'What the heck!'

I'll probably change it again in a few months. HA!

Hi Sue, your link to the Thame History site doesn't seem to work, although Googling the site reaches it.

I think Paul's original post was more about the confusion in the minds of the  newspaper people. No one with local knowledge could confuse the two rivers.   Incidentally, the Thame is not very impressive at the moment, despite recent rainfall. When I was in Dorchester last week, the River Thame was little more than a stream rather than a river. I can tell you are still nostalgic about Oxfordshire from your comments about St. Giles' Fair !