Would Pontius Pilate’s first name be prounced “PONT e us,” “PON shus” or something else?
Thanks.
I pronounce it Pont-chus.
Classical Latin didn’t have anything like English “sh,” [ETA: or “ch”] so probably not that last one. Cassell’s Latin dictionary says that all the vowels are short, so I assume “Pon” as in pond*, “ti” as in still, and “us” as in us. Alternatively, it may have been “Pont” + “yus” — I’m not sure how many syllables it’s supposed to have, and -ius can be “ih-us” or “yuss.” Classical Latin is also supposed to have had a pitch accent as well as a stress accent, but don’t ask me how that works.
*But not aspirated like an English speaker would, more like French, Spanish, or Italian.
As far as I know it should be something like:
[ˈpɔntijʊs]
Stress on the first syllable
“pond” with a “t” seems about right, just without aspiration
“i” between consonant and vowel becomes [ij].
Short “u” is a [ʊ] as in “put”.
Voiceless “s”
[mitpick]It would be “us” as in puss, as kellner indicated, not “us” as in pus or us.[/nitpick]
Pon-tee-us (like pond-tea-us, without the D). Classical Latin was more sonorous and, as I understand it, put less emphasis on accenting one syllable more strongly; try giving all three syllables roughly the same level of stress, perhaps only a little more on the pon. (It’s been a long time since my Latin classes, but that’s how i remember it.)
His other name is, if anything, even farther from English standard pronunciation. Pilate (in classical Latin) isn’t “pilot,” but pih-lah-tay.
edit: Gary T and kellner are right, us as in puss or put, not uh or up. It’s a somewhat subtle difference to some speakers.
Wouldn’t it be more like “pawn-tee-ooss”?
Pilate wasn’t his name in Latin. It’s the English form of the name Pilatus. Pilate (three syllables) happens to be the vocative case of Pilatus, but that’s not the origin of the English spelling.
There are many famous Romans whose English names are different from their Latin names: Virgil for Virgilius, Hadrian for Hadrianus, Marc Antony for Marcus Antonius, Constantine for Constantinus, Tarquin for Tarquinius, etc.
You mean Virgil for Vergilius.
D’oh. Good point, bibliophagus.
Quite right… thank you.
Thank you for getting that right.
Bit of trivia: In the medieval Catholic pronunciation of Latin, they adopted it to sound as much like Italian as possible. Which would result in “pawnts-yoos”. Church Latin pronounces the digraph ti before a vowel as “tsy.” As in Italian Ponzio (because z is pronounced /ts/ in Italian). Now you know the derivation of “Ponzi scheme.” The ancient name Pontius may be derived from the Samnite language. [sup]Cite[/sup]
It helps if you read the names in Hebrew. It’s a very formalistic language - there’s only one possible way of pronouncing a Hebrew word - and foreign names are usually transcribed phoenetically. Insomuch as Hebrew vowel sounds are similar to Latin vowel sounds (and I believe they’re much closer than the English), the Hebrew form of Latin names is most likely very similar to the original.
That’s roughly how we pronounce it in modern ecclesiastical Latin at our church when we say the Credo (sub Pontio Pilato) each Sunday, and during Holy Week, when the Passions from each of the four gospels are read. The o vowel is slightly rounder though.
Valente,
Vox Imperitorius
Sorry. That’s all the Latin I know. 
(apologies in advance for anyone offended. I’m so immature sometimes)
So, he was the guy with the body-core exercises?