There is something particularly irritating about the stubborn insistence of some Weegies on the pronunciation of Holyrood as "holey-rood", when the entire population of Scotland's capital and its hinterland pronounces the place name as "hollyrood", and has done so beyond living memory (Letters, May 1 and 4).

The name of stems from the religious foundation of the Haly Rude. We should bear in mind the old native Lothian pronunciation of the letter "a", which can still be heard among older Scots speakers in East Lothian. For "man", "laddie", "lassie", we get "mawn", "lawdie", "lawssie". My own village, although formerly spelled "Langniddry", has always been pronounced "Lawngniddry", and the medieval and early modern pronunciation of "haly rude" in Edinburgh was almost certainly "hawly rood".

It is a very small corruption to shift "hawly rood" to "holly rood". The pronunciation "Hollyrood" may not be an obvious reflection of the original meaning, but then how many Scottish place names (including Glasgow) are pronounced today in the same way as they were when first named? Surely we should be guided by the current pronunciation of the people who live in the area in question - and Edinburgh and the Lothians are unanimous in rendering Holyrood as "Hollyrood".

D M Robertson, Longniddry.

I would suggest that the correct pronunciation of Holyrood as "holly rood" reflects the original Scots spelling and pronunciation of "haly rude". I would also suggest that the difference between the Edinburgh and Glasgow pronunciations of Calton reflects the different origins of the name, with the Edinburgh Calton perhaps being derived from the Gaelic coille-du(i)n, meaning "wood on the hill" and the Glasgow Calton perhaps being originally "cal(f)to(u)n", a place where calves were reared.

Incidentally, the Glasgow Calton was a separate burgh from 1815 until it was annexed by Glasgow in 1846. While lord provost of Glasgow from 1840-43, Sir James Campbell (father of Sir Henry-Campbell-Bannerman, Liberal Prime Minister, 1905-08) was censured by the police commissioners for authorising the Glasgow Fire Brigade to go outside the city boundaries to deal with a fire at Barrowfield in the burgh of Calton.

Dr Alexander S Waugh, Banchory, Kincardineshire.

My own inclination with place names is to listen to what the local people say. The question should be "Why is Mulguy spelled Milngavie?" not the other way around. In a multilingual country, speakers of the politically dominant language often make mistakes when assigning standard spellings to place names.

The local people, however, will usually continue to pronounce it the way they always did, even when knowledge of the origins is lost. Regarding Holyrood, making hard rules about correct pronunciation kills living language.

When I lived in Edinburgh, I learned the local pronunciation, which I still use. Let's stop worrying about the correct pronunciation and concentrate on what is done in the place.

Mary Scammell, Inverness.

While agreeing wholeheartedly with Thomas McLaughlin that the pronunciation "holy rood" is correct, the debate has less to do with regional dialect, I suggest, than with the fact that Holy Rood, or Holy Cross, is so blatantly in-your-face Christian and Catholic that it is distasteful to the sensitivities of the modern fundamentalist secularist.

The same mentality which balks at the suggestion that Christmas might actually have something to do with the Mass of Christ, or that Easter might be connected with the most momentous event in human history - His resurrection - is, I fear, sadly at work here.

Better by far to have the cult of the Great Chocolate Egg or the devotion to the Cheesy Old Geezer in Red, than to be so hideously unfashionable as to treat these festivals as genuine religious events. Like the splendid ruins of the great borders abbeys - Melrose, Jedburgh and Kelso - or the gaunt skeleton of St Andrews, this usage stands as a reminder of a free Scotland that existed as an independent state in the Christian European family of nations, a country with a rich thousand-year-old history of Catholic culture. To all who know and love the real Scotland, it is, and will always be, Holy Rood, the Holy Cross.

Brian M Quail, Glasgow.

My late parents, grandparents, friends and neighbours and others always pronounced Holyrood as "Hollyrood" and I follow their impeccable Edinburgh precepts. It is with a sense of weary resignation that I find myself obliged to cross swords once again with my old Weegie adversary, Thomas McLaughlin (Letters, May 4). Of course, I know full well that he will again refuse mere Edinburghers the right to ask that Edinburgh place names be pronounced in the Edinburgh, rather than the Glasgow, way. He is, however, gracious enough to grant we humble denizens of Scotland's capital the right to our own pronunciations within our own borders while insisting that, everywhere else, Glasgow rules must apply.

Neil Scott (May 4) makes a good point about the pronunciation of Milngavie and I bet Mr McLaughlin, like me, is out of his seat shaking his fist at the telly every time some posh BBC newsreader gets that one wrong. And yet, since London is the capital of the United Kingdom and a bigger city than Glasgow, should we not be adopting its rules of pronunciation instead of those of merely the second city of the empire?

David C Purdie, Loanhead, Midlothian.

Why is Holyrood pronounced Hollyrood, asks Peter G Allan (Letters, May 1). And why is holiday (holy day) pronounced hollyday? In Glasgow, we pronounce holiday correctly, but spell it differently, as in "ra ferr hoaliday".

Archie White, Jordanhill, Glasgow.