Famous names you would never have connected to their written forms

I had a work acquaintance named “Ng” and refused to even attempt to address him directly, lest I make an ass of myself. Over time, I heard his name most frequently pronounced kind of like “aung” - not quite an O sound, not quite an A, but somewhere in that.

This reminds me of the SNL skit with Nicolas Cage who played a guy named [something] Asswipe. Throughout the skit he was correcting people on the proper pronunciation: “It’s oss-WEE-pay!”

Just a couple of years ago, I went to see a reading by novelist Jim Crace and he told a story about going into an English bookstore (I forget the name, but apparently it’s noted for hiring only college graduates) and asking for a copy of his own book–Do you have [something] by Jim Crace (rhymes with Grace)?-- and being confronted with the reply. “It’s pronounced kra-chay.” Unlike Belloc, Crace said he was too intimidated to say anything about it.

NFL Hall of Fame QB Joe Theismann actually pronounces his own last name “THEEZ-man” but when in college some teammates hung a banner that read “Theisman for Heisman” so ever since he’s gone with the “THIGHS-man” pronounciation.

Of course, that pronunciation is rather close to the written form, so it’s not quite in the spirit of the OP…

Hmm…OK, how about former Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski? (Shuh-SHEFF-ski)

(We could have a field day with Polish names)

In her autobio And A Voice To Sing With, Joan Baez says her father’s family always pronounced their last name as “Bize,” not “Bi-ez.”

He was fired? He went pro? He died? Had a sex change and now coaches the UNC women’s team? I must know the details, man

Bah. I was confusing him with Dean Smith. Must be the funny names.

There’s definitely no hard Y sound in it.

It’s one of those things that just gets more confusing the more you try to explain it - sometimes I think the guys who Romanised the language were on some serious drugs though, and the final vowel is more like an ‘i’ sound, tending towards a schwa. Even the ‘ng’ sound is quite soft. You can really start with with your mouth positioned to say ‘ng’ and then just say ‘win’ instead.

If in doubt, just say “win”. It’s utterly acceptable to the ears of Westernised Vietnamese folks.

Wikipedia really does have a page on everything: Nguyen

(There’s a sound file on that page too)

The hockey player Benoit Hogue. I hate to admit it, but I spent quite a bit of time scanning the bench for Ben Wa Ho. :smack:

I have it on the authority of local sportscaster Tom Suiter that the proper pronunciation of his name is “Coach K” :stuck_out_tongue:

Actually, Polish is not that difficult – just that it uses a lot of alternate sounds for consonants, and phonemes English does not have or rarely uses, leading you to think that a Polish W is the /w/ sound and not, like German, /v/ or /f/.

Difficult enough for a post in this thread, though. :slight_smile:

Thought of another one. That former Canadiens and Avalanche goalie. Patrick Roy.

Quite common in Polynesian society - in fact, I met a boy called Saint John The Baptist xxxxx in Manukau, Auckland (Auckland is the biggest Polynesian city). And it was Saint John the Baptist, all the time - none of this Sinjin stuff.

Si

Ha! I’m a Canadian, so for half of a second, I was thinking “what’s the problem with that name?”

On that note, when Ottawa first acquired Brian Pothier, my brother and I would never pronounce his name correctly. We kept saying “Po-Tee-Ay”. Apparently, he pronounces it “Poth-Ee-Er”. Go figure.

I also remember when Ottawa had a player called Stan Neckar. As near as I could tell, the proper pronunciation is “Net-skash”.

Remember back in the '70s and '80s when the radio show, American Top 40, was hosted by that Casey guy?

When I finally saw his name in print, it took a little bit to make the connection. Casey Kasem. I remember him always pronouncing it KAY-some. As a kid, I never even connected it with a middle eastern name.

Not quite up to standard, but:

The lead singer of Nickelback’s name is Chad Kroeger. Now, being the annoying American that I am, I always assumed that because the O came first, his name was pronounced KRO-ger, like the grocery store.

Until my mother (a Nickelback fangirl), the other day, corrected me - it’s KRU-ger, like the horror movies. Honest mistake, I guess - but damn, did that confuse me. Anyone care to enlighten me as to why certain rules get tossed out the window for last names?

~Tasha

Well, for starters, keep in mind that last names come from a variety of different cultures, with a variety of pronunciations for the same letter combinations(prime example: in English, -er is pronounced “err”, while in French, it’s pronounced “ay”). Even if a name comes from a language that doesn’t use the Latin Alphabet it won’t be spelt phonetically: that would imply the spelling of one’s name being different in say, France and Germany.

Then, just to confuse things further, some people go with the English pronunciation of their names rather than the original pronunciation. Like my example of Brian Pothier, who has a French name.

Hmmm…when did Beyonce become a Rap star? :eek:

For the longest time, I thought the NPR correspondent’s name was Snick Paprikash (which, now that I think about it, sounds almost as proposterous as Lemony Snicket). I figured “Snick” must be a nickname. I was rather surprised when I found out it is Snigdah Prakash.

I was a Rush fan for years before I found out that drummer Neil Peart’s last name should be pronounced “Peert.”