# Stein: Stine or Steen? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 21, 2000, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stein-stine-or-steen/46682 "2000-12-21T13:58:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Henga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/dc4da7/32.png) [@Henga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Henga)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2016, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stein-stine-or-steen/46682/41 "2016-01-24T16:20:15Z")
> [@bibliophage](#): > > William Safire did a column on this subject several years ago, with regard to Arthur Rubinstein. If the name is German, then -stein is usually pronounced “stine”. But if the name is Jewish, it can be pronounced “stine” or “steen” depending on a lot of factors, including the time and place the name originated. The only real rule is that the name should be pronounced the way the family pronounces it. Safire’s conclusion (IIRC) was that Rubinstein should be pronounced with a “steen.” How do you explain Oscar Hammerstein II, American lyricist and Kurt von Hammerstein, head general of the German army at the time Hitler was made Chancellor? The American was Jewish, the German was not. I’ve heard Oscar’s name as both -stine and -steen on TV. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stein-stine-or-steen/46682/42 "2016-01-25T04:23:08Z")
California’s Senator Diane Feinstein has always been pronounced “Fine-Stine”, from all that I’ve ever heard (typically from news readers on TV or radio). – Senegoid (I pronounce it Seen-a-gwad.) ---
**Author:** ![Henga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/dc4da7/32.png) [@Henga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Henga)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stein-stine-or-steen/46682/43 "2016-01-25T04:34:24Z")
Back in the 1970s my mother worked for Lerner Shops and her regional manager was named Schleicher. I know that name as the last or next to last Chancellor of the Weimar Republic before Hitler. In German it sounds like Schl-I-ker with a long I sound, but this Lerner Shop manager was Jewish and pronounced the name as Sl-a-ker with a short a sound. You’d never get that sound from the German spelling. ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 7:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stein-stine-or-steen/46682/44 "2016-01-25T07:57:07Z")
> [@jkws](#): > > My paternal great grandmother: Katy Sharpensteen > > My father informed me that the original spelling was Sharpenstein and he knew his mother’s parents to be Jewish. He explained that it was changed by officials loading the boat or unloading the boat in order that the sailing/sailed Family WOULD MOST DEFINITELY BE IDENTIFIED AS JEWISH. Has anyone else ever heard this explanation? It’s interesting how persistent this myth of officials changing immigrants’ names is when the US, unlike most countries, don’t have a central government register with an official spelling, and when anyone familiar with old records will observe first hand that spelling was still somewhat erratic for names well into the 20th century. Someone else might have heard this explanation and not piped up in this thread yet, but I can say with a strong level of confidence that it’s not true: [http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ellis-island-isnt-blame-your-familys-name-change-180953832/?no-ist](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ellis-island-isnt-blame-your-familys-name-change-180953832/?no-ist) ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stein-stine-or-steen/46682/45 "2016-01-25T14:47:59Z")
> [@naita](#): > > It’s interesting how persistent this myth of officials changing immigrants’ names is when the US, unlike most countries, don’t have a central government register with an official spelling, and when anyone familiar with old records will observe first hand that spelling was still somewhat erratic for names well into the 20th century. > > Someone else might have heard this explanation and not piped up in this thread yet, but I can say with a strong level of confidence that it’s not true: [http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ellis-island-isnt-blame-your-familys-name-change-180953832/?no-ist](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ellis-island-isnt-blame-your-familys-name-change-180953832/?no-ist) “Myth” is true if you mean a history that has entered culture as a defining and significant identification. “Myth” as a synonym for “not true,” no (in fact, the more general and factual definition, “lies that tell the truth” is also not necessarily true here). It is a thread in Jewish myth and culture since the earliest days of “travel”: a Midrash (?-cite needed) from the 2nd century tells us out of the the vast majority of slaves under Pharoah, only the few who didn’t change their names merited, and were given, the way out. I understand **Nava** ’s implication, that the myth/fact of changing one’s name under your own volition is one prevalent around the world. (From the earliest Jewish Patriarchs, for the Jews.) Back to now, the thread “Question about USA (NYC) in the 1920s” goes into this. [Question about USA (NYC) in the 1910s - Factual Questions - Straight Dope Message Board](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=663906) Because no joke gets told once, and I’m too lazy–and the joke about the prisoners who tell jokes by reciting their index numbers is appropriate here–I’ll cite myself: (Explanation and translation of punchline in original thread–one’s need for which speaks to **Nava** ’s point.) > [@](#): > > [Quoth **Leo** : … > > Three old Jews are sitting around, reminiscing about how they changed their names, but still keeping a vestige of their roots. > > – My name used to be Chaim Meirowitz. After I came over I changed it to Henry Meyer. > > – Me, my name before I came over was Moses Rosenberg. When I came over I changed it to Marty Rose. > > [So now the third guy says] > > – Well, my name is Sean Fergusson. > > [General consternation] > > – This is the name you gave yourself? Who even heard such names in the Old Country! What made you do that? > > – It was horrible. When my turn came at Ellis Island I was scared out of my mind, when the guy asked for my name all I could say was “Oy, shoyn fergessen.” (Transliteration adjusted from original. Some word changes for style.) ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stein-stine-or-steen/46682/46 "2016-01-25T15:04:07Z")
FWIW, a friend once told me–with a Jew’s time-honored hypersensitivity to such matters–how in Germany in the 1950s he particularly remembered being asked if the “…man” ending his last name was spelled with one “m” or two, in an attempt to determine if he was “a real German” or not. I don’t know. Onomastics of the Jewish people is particularly hairy. I think I’ve been told that the “…sky” ending my wife’s last name is a sign to Poles that she is a Jew, as opposed to “…ski.” I have no idea. On pronouncing Lenny the conductor’s name, I believe the following, from an authoritative site, is dispositive: [Jew or Not Jew: Leonard Bernstein](http://www.jewornotjew.com/profile.jsp?ID=605) ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stein-stine-or-steen/46682/47 "2016-01-25T15:04:15Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#): > > The [Frankenstein](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=51930) thread prompts this question. > > Some people pronounce “stein” in a name as “stine”, and some pronounce it as “steen”. In high school German class we learned that in German, the combination “ei” was pronounced as a long “I” (“aye” or “eye”) and the combination “ie” is pronounced like a long “E” (“eee”). > > So if someone’s name is Feinstein, is it “Fine-_stine_” or “Fine-_steen_”? It seems to be pronounced both ways. Why? And is it 'fraink’enstein or 'fronk’enstein? ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stein-stine-or-steen/46682/48 "2016-01-25T15:09:31Z")
> [@White SIFL](#): > > And is it 'fraink’enstein or 'fronk’enstein? Which reminds me of the (justifiable–which is your joke) muttering when President Obama went around saying “Pockistan,” which nobody says in the USA, to be sensitive to _their_ hearing, presumably. I think he dropped it after a few years. ---
**Author:** ![Anarcho\_Liberalist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/df705f/32.png) [@Anarcho\_Liberalist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anarcho_Liberalist)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stein-stine-or-steen/46682/49 "2016-01-25T16:30:03Z")
1. I think you Americans would have a huge challenge if you wanted to pronounce each and every family name correctly, according to the costum in the originating country. And the whatever-steins would be one of the lesser of your problems. As stated several times: go for whatever the name barer uses himself and leave it at that. 1. This reminds of a very stupid thread I once read on some neo nazi or such forum (one gets bored sometimes …). OP asked how he could spot a Jewish background in family names. So all the other dimwits came up with -feld, -baum, -berg etc. Which, as you may or may not know, are just common German words in family names (field, tree, mountain). Stein btw (or Steen in Dutch) literally means stone, but usually referred to stone house or castle. 2. I feel sorry for all the Weiners > [@Green\_Bean](#): > > Weiner can be pronounced “Weener” or “Whiner.” ---
**Author:** ![dougie\_monty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stein-stine-or-steen/46682/50 "2016-01-25T17:01:03Z")
Remember Allan Sherman’s song “Shake Hands with Your Uncle Max”? One verse ended with “Stein with an ‘e-i’ and Styne with a ‘y’!” 😃 ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stein-stine-or-steen/46682/51 "2016-01-25T19:54:11Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > “Myth” is true if you mean a history that has entered culture as a defining and significant identification. “Myth” as a synonym for “not true,” no (in fact, the more general and factual definition, “lies that tell the truth” is also not necessarily true here). It is a thread in Jewish myth and culture since the earliest days of “travel”: a Midrash (?-cite needed) from the 2nd century tells us out of the the vast majority of slaves under Pharoah, only the few who didn’t change their names merited, and were given, the way out. I understand **Nava** ’s implication, that the myth/fact of changing one’s name under your own volition is one prevalent around the world. (From the earliest Jewish Patriarchs, for the Jews.) How is that relevant to the myth, as in not true, of names being changed by immigration officials? This was a day and age when people were changing their names in whatever manner they liked to fit into a new country and the government didn’t mind at all. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2016, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stein-stine-or-steen/46682/52 "2016-02-01T20:03:23Z")
> [@bibliophage](#): > > William Safire did a column on this subject several years ago, with regard to Arthur Rubinstein. If the name is German, then -stein is usually pronounced “stine”. But if the name is Jewish, it can be pronounced “stine” or “steen” depending on a lot of factors, including the time and place the name originated. But what about German Jews? > [@](#): > > The only real rule is that the name should be pronounced the way the family pronounces it. I think just about everybody accepts this to be a self-evident truth, but even that doesn’t help when various third parties pronounce the name either way. Rubenstein, of course, is a good example, and I’ve heard Epstein pronounced both ways. Another likely source of confusion is that, historically, there wasn’t just one German language, but a dialect continuum over that region of northern and central Europe, and this covered most of the area between Denmark, Poland, Italy, France, and the North Sea. In modern Dutch as well as northern dialects of German, the word for “stone”, on which those names are based, isn’t _Stein_ but _Steen_. This vowel in this word certainly doesn’t rhyme with “green” in English, but it is definitely a lot closer to that sound than it is to the diphthong heard in the standard German word. So in many instances I’m sure the “steen” pronunciation in names wasn’t just the result of lackadaisical immigration officers or a well-meaning attempt of the family itself to fit in; rather it was the way that syllable was regularly pronounced in the region from which the family came. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2016, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stein-stine-or-steen/46682/53 "2016-02-01T20:06:30Z")
> [@IzzyR](#): > > The “stine” version is closer to the original, which is actually pronounced similar to the “i” in pipe (as opposed to the “i” in pine). I’m not sure I understand. Isn’t it the same diphthong in both words? OTOH if you mean vowel length (duration), then I concede that there’s usually a distinction there. ---
**Author:** ![PatrickLondon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/patricklondon/32/4422_2.png) [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2016, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stein-stine-or-steen/46682/54 "2016-02-01T21:10:18Z")
In German, it’s pronounced “shtine”; in Yiddish _I think_ it’s more likely to have been more like “shtayn”; if it’s Dutch, it will be spelt “steen” and pronounced somewhere between “shteen” and “shtayn”. So it probably all depends on where the family originally came from, as well as whether they pronounced the local language with an accent, and how they chose to pronounce it in English, bearing in mind what they might have felt necessary to aid assimilation, or to assert their identity. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2016, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stein-stine-or-steen/46682/55 "2016-02-02T03:12:59Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Shtine. Zombie-shtine! > > Any truth to the old rule of thumb I learned somewhere: In German, if two vowels next to each other, emphasize the second vowel? Nein. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2016, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stein-stine-or-steen/46682/56 "2016-02-06T22:34:56Z")
This topic in general and in specific is discussed deeply–with the clarity only an argument can bring out–in the following movie scene set in a barber shop (Eddie Murphy plays a number of the characters). The entire scene is extraordinarily funny, which is why I’m not giving internal time cites for the specific dialogue. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/Il9jJObx7FE/maxresdefault.jpg "Coming to America - Barbershop Boxers") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il9jJObx7FE) ---
**Author:** ![PatrickLondon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/patricklondon/32/4422_2.png) [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2016, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stein-stine-or-steen/46682/57 "2016-02-08T13:59:10Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Any truth to the old rule of thumb I learned somewhere: In German, if two vowels next to each other, emphasize the second vowel? I don’t understand this. In German spelling, two vowels next to each other aren’t separate sounds, together they make another sound. “E” on its own is either a schwa or something like a short “eh”, and “I” on its own is somewhere between the English “in” or “ee”; but together as “EI” they make the same sound (more or less) as the English “eye”. Likewise, in German “eu” isn’t more “oo” than “eh”, it’s “oy”. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stein-stine-or-steen/46682.md?page=2)