Well, “David” is easy enough, but according to this page, which appears to be from a Bowie fan site, although many people pronounce “Bowie” to rhyme with “Maui,” and it really ought to rhyme with “gooey,” he himself rhymes it with “snowy.”
When I first started hearing about him, in the late 60s and early 70s, I was under the impression that the snowy version was the right one. However, when I heard that he had named his son Zowie Bowie I concluded that the Maui version must be it, and I have tried to remember to say it that way ever since. Surely the point of “Zowie Bowie” is to rhyme with itself, and if “Bowie” rhymed with snowy the first name would have to be pronounced as Zoë, which is a girls name. (Admittedly the Bowie family were enthusiastically embracing gender confusion at the time, but surely the other point of “Zowie” apart from the rhyme, is to be weird, and to express happy amazement, not to be a mere variant spelling of a relatively ordinary girl’s name.) So what is it? Did David himself get confused about how to say his own name (not impossible, as he was actually born with the name “Jones,” and, no doubt, the time when Zowie was born was a very hectic period in his life), or was the kid really called Zoë all along.
I saw Angela Bowie on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson back in the 70s. She pronounced her son’s name like the girl’s name Zoë. She claimed that the name Zoë had been a favorite of hers since she was young. So the kid had the rhyming name Zowie Bowie (both as in snowy.)
I guess they* really were aiming for maximum gender confusion after all, then. Poor Duncan.
*Well, Angie anyway. Apparently David wanted him to be Duncan all along.
Really? I have often heard the Maui version, but the snowy one does come more naturally to me. It has taken a conscious effort to say it the Hawaiian way.
When he first started appearing in the US, the articles on him said it was supposed to be pronounced to rhyme with Zowie. However, the “Bowie knife” pronunciation was more popular in the US. Since it wasn’t his real name,* he probably just went with the flow.
*He’s David Jones, so he had to monkee around with it.
Avril Lavigne was widely ridiculed a few years ago when she pronounced it the “Maui” way. I could swear, though, that I’ve heard a few people in the UK pronounce it that way, too.
Where did you hear that D pronounced it like Maui?
Dick Cavett asked him about Zowie, and David said “Snowy.” You know what I mean.
This was in the seventies, so, you never can tell what changes he made since. Zowie, since it isn’t spelled Zoe, need not be a female only name.
He says “snowy”, so I do. In my opinion, the correct pronounciation is his pronounciation. I can’t see an argument for pronouncing his name differently to the way he does.
The Maui-like pronunciation is a joke pronunciation, a way of poking a bit of fun at Bowie for choosing a pretentious pseudonym. The reasoning behind it (and I just love explaining jokes to people who don’t get them) is that David Jones, a fey Englishman, renamed himself after the tough American frontiersman, so people choose to mispronounce the name in a mock-English way to emphasise the fact that D Bowie is really neither American nor the outdoorsy type at all.
So anyone who says Bowie to rhyme with Maui is either having a bit of a laugh at Bowie’s expense or someone who heard it pronounced that way, missed the joke, and took it seriously.
