Louis Armstrong pronounced his own name as “lewis.”
That’s what I’ve heard all my life, but then relatively recently I read that his family is inconsistent about which pronunciation they use.
Re. Schwarzenegger: Egge means a harrow, and eggen is the verb to harrow, so an Egger would be very similar to a ploughman. Oak would be Eiche.
Sorry for missing the joke then. I guess I figured if you were making a point of spelling his name the way it’s pronounced, you would have spelled it something like Geeyome.
It’s the standard [e] vowel—the close-mid front unrounded vowel—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close-mid_front_unrounded_vowel—in most Indo-European languages:
French:
/e/ /fe/ fée ‘fairy’
/ɛ/ /fɛ/ fait ‘does’
German:
/e/ /den/ den ‘(to) the’
/ɛ/ /dɛn/ denn ‘then’
Italian:
/e/ /mela/ mela ‘apple’
/ɛ/ /tɛsta/ testa ‘head’
Spanish:
/e/ /peso/ peso
Native English speakers usually pronounce these words as “fay” /feɪ/, “Dane” /deɪn/ “mayla” /meɪlə/, and “payso” /peɪsoʊ/, but it’s not the correct vowel.
I remember very well when he was alive. And his name was ALWAYS pronounced “Louie.” Except of course in mock-formality, like in “Hello, Dolly!”
Don’t feel bad about it. Even Steve Buscemi pronounces Steve Buscemi’s name wrong:
You mean Bill and Ted were wrong? Whoah, totally bogus!
Thanks (and to JKellyMap as well). This may turn out to be one of those distinctions that I’m just not able to hear, but I’ll try to listen for it next time I hear someone speaking another language. I actually studied German in high school, but if that vowel sound was ever taught to us, I’m afraid I’ve forgotten it! :smack:
I wish I could find some footage of Lugosi saying his own name, but so far I haven’t.
Well, it’s not that far off. It’s the right vowel but diphtongized. Drop the “y” sound at the end and you’ve got it.
I’m not sure I agree. I say that, when you’re speaking English, you should use English phonemes. And, in English, /e/ and /ej/ are the same phoneme.
Oh, I agree with you. I was just responding to a question about the Hungarian/Spanish/Italian “e” (well expounded upon by Acsenray). By “correct,” in this case I meant when one is speaking in Spanish or Italian.
I say “Baylah Fleck” and “Baylah Bartok” – I’d sound pretentious otherwise.
I think you can go fish on this one. “Bella” and “Bayla” are equally correct when speaking English.
When I was a kid I pronounced Siobhan Fahey (from Bananarama)'s name in my head as “See-oh-buh-hawn”. Phonics, y’all. How do they get “Shivonn” from that?!
I also read Siouxsie (Siouxsie & The Banshees) as “See-ouks-see” (pronouncing the x) in my head - wasn’t until a VJ on MuchMusic said her name that I learned it’s pronounced “Suzy”.
Forget it, SJ, it’s Gaelic town. 
Who else would get tee-shook from Taioseach?
Do you also call the Native Americans “See-ouks”?
By everybody except him. He pronounced it “Lewis.” Most of his friends and acquaintances addressed him as “Pops,” so it didn’t come up.
The story goes that a record company exec in the studio during the “Hello Dolly” session repeatedly addressed Armstrong as “Louie.” Armstrong didn’t correct him, but went into the booth and made a point of singing, “This is Lewissssssssss, Dolly.”
In a recent interview with sisters Kate and Rooney Mara, the interviewer asked them the correct pronunciation of their last name. The both shrugged and said something to the effect of “sometimes I say it one way and sometimes the other” 
Huh? I mean people pronounce my name in one of four different ways and I’ll answer to any of them and won’t get offended at the wrong one, but there is still a proper (or rather intended) way to say it, as mandated by my parents. I thought that was a strange answer. Also, for some reason when I say Rooney’s full name in my head the first syllable rhymes with “car”, while Kate’s name always gets pronounced to rhyme “Sahara”.
A stab at it:
S is sh before i or e
I is short as in “bit”
O doesn’t do much to pronunciation, but is “symmetric” to the Á, and lets you know how to pronounce BH
BH it is important to note that h is not a letter so much as a marker that the previous letter’s sound is altered, and the surrounding vowels tell you exactly how. In older scripts, it was a dot symbol instead, but much like how “Ye Olde” is really “The Old,” an existing character was used to replace it for some reason. V is usually considered a variation of b, and in some languages are indistinguishable (e.g. Japanese television > terebishon > terebi). Depending on the vowels, it can be a “V”-like or “W” sound (I think the latter is more accurate among native speakers!?)
Á is long, aahh
N is n
Her real name is Susan so most can manage that.
My last name is pronounced at least three different ways within the family, and about fifty different ways outside the family. My dad and his brother pronounce it differently from the “correct” way, while me and my siblings and my uncle’s kids pronounce it differently from them. I once thought about starting to pronounce it the correct way, but why bother now.
Yeah, that’s what threw me–when he started being quoted in interviews as saying ‘it’s Bu-CEM-i.’ (Maybe he’s just been screwing with us.)
I’ve never seen any of the Bill and Ted franchise, but if my childhood misconception matches their utterances, I am truly honored. (Or something.)