Kevin Warsh, President Trump’s nominee to lead the Federal Reserve, has a last name that for many listeners evokes a regional pronunciation of the verb “wash” — rendered as “warsh.” Language commentator Patricia T. O’Conner, who grew up in Iowa, recalls her grandmother scolding, “show me your hands … I don’t think you warshed those hands,” an example of the r-inserting pronunciation that many Americans recognize.
Linguists say the extra “r” is part of an American dialect feature that is fading but still audible in pockets across the country. You may hear it in casual renderings of place names, too — people sometimes say “Warshington D.C.” — and names complicate the picture: Paul E. Reed, an associate professor of phonetics and phonology at the University of Alabama, points out that the surname Warsh might originally have been “Wash” or “Walsh,” but the broader pronunciation pattern has a clearer linguistic explanation.
One influential theory ties the phenomenon to Scotch-Irish migration into the U.S. South Midland in the late 18th century. Settlers who came from Scotland to Ulster and then to North America tended to be strongly rhotic — they pronounced r sounds robustly — and that rhotic speech left traces in pockets of Appalachia and the Midlands. Robin Dodsworth, a linguistics professor at North Carolina State University, says that regions from Baltimore through southern Ohio, into parts of Michigan and even some areas of Washington state show remnants of the pronunciation. Older speakers in those areas are more likely to use “warsh,” though Dodsworth notes it has declined in the Midlands where it probably began.
Historical records back up the variant’s age. Nineteenth-century sources capture similar forms: philologist Frederick Thomas Elworthy quoted dialect speech in an 1875 paper, and Indiana poet James Whitcomb Riley used the phrase “warshed his hands” in an 1897 poem, indicating the pronunciation has longstanding roots in American English.
Phonetically, the insertion is plausible. Nicole Holliday, an acting associate professor of linguistics at UC Berkeley, explains that the American r is relatively unusual globally and that high-frequency words like “wash” are especially susceptible to variation. Linguists describe the process as coarticulation: sounds next to one another influence each other’s production. In “wash,” the final “sh” affects the preceding vowel, and the lip rounding and tongue movements needed for sounds like “wah,” “sh,” and an r-like quality can make an “r” seem to slip into the sequence. Reed adds that once a pronunciation becomes established in a community, children learn it and may even spell words like “wash” as “warsh” when they begin writing.
Beyond phonetics, the variant carries social meaning. Reed uses the word “rootedness” to describe how pronunciations tie speakers to place and family. For many people, hearing “warsh” summons memories of relatives and home speech. In southeast Baltimore, a neighborhood accent made famous by filmmaker John Waters, locals report hearing or using “warsh.” Baltimore native Lisa Molina says the pronunciation feels natural because her mother used it; others have heard the variant in cities such as Philadelphia or Seattle.
The pronunciation also appears in popular culture: country singer Luke Bryan sings “Start warshin’ all our worries down the drain,” Senator John McCain once said “Warshington” in public, and actors praised for authentic regional accents—like Kathy Bates’ portrayal of Baltimore speech—have been noted for reflecting such local features.
Still, linguists observe the form is becoming less common. Dodsworth attributes the decline to increased population mobility: as people move and dialects mix, localized pronunciations tend to erode. She does not see social media as the primary driver. Holliday emphasizes that language is constantly changing and that speakers adapt over time.
In short, the “warsh” pronunciation reflects a mix of historical migration and rhotic influence, phonetic tendencies such as coarticulation, and social identity tied to place and family. It survives in memories, literature, music and some local speech, but as communities shift, the variant is gradually receding.