How to pronounce the names of Melbourne suburbs

Most pronunciation guides for Melbourne are useless because they lazily cover only the most popular places. They’ll list the same ten or twenty suburbs like Prahran, Malvern, or Reservoir, sometimes Truganina. They'll hedge their bets on Lalor saying it could be "lay-lor or it could be "law-lah". Heaven help someone who wants to know how to pronounce Clematis, Eumemmering, Kealba, or Yuroke.

For the places they do cover, they manage to mangle the actual sounds of the city. Prahran is "Praan", Mebourne is "Mel-bin". They're close, but it depends on the nuances of what "aa" means, or knowing the difference between the "i" in "bin" and what a schwa sounds like.

My list is asystematic record of every Melbourne suburb (along with parts of Greater Geelong, Mitchell, Moorabool and Macedon Ranges shires) using a consistent phonological framework. It maps the city exactly as it's actually spoken by locals, using a one-to-one system to capture the real Melburnian accent without the guesswork of figuring out if your normal access includes a cot/caught merger or a rhotic "r".

A comprehensive key to pronunciation is provided at the bottom of this page, to help explain what all these symbols mean.

Melbourne suburbs list

Pronunciation key and orthography

This guide uses a custom phonetic system to capture the specific nuances of the Australian English accent. To avoid the ambiguity of standard English spelling, the system follows a one-to-one logic where every sound is represented by a consistent symbol.

These pronunciations are based on my own accent as a Melburnian speaking Australian English, which is non-rhotic. For example, words like "park" are represented using ah to show the vowel sound without an 'r'.

Vowels

Every vowel is represented by either a unique symbol—like @ for a schwa, æ for a flat 'a' or a dedicated two-character combination. These two-letter units are a single unit representing a single vowel sound and are used to ensure every vowel sound is distinct, rather than being read as individual letters or diphthongs.

Consonants

Every consonant is represented by a single, consistent letter or symbol. For example, $ represents 'sh' and £ is used specifically for the 'ng' sound.

Syllables

Syllable boundaries are marked with dots (·) to show the natural flow of the word.

Vowel pronunciation key

Consonant pronunciation key