“Louie”…or more specifically, why is the name pronounced in the French manner?
I am aware that he has various relatives and ancestors named Louis or Louise, but I’m curious as to what the antecedent of this is. After all, French as the language of the Court went out some time in the Middle Ages, or so I thought. Obviously however he and the family choose to pronounce it is correct, but I am not saying they pronounce it wrong, rather just wondering why they do pronounce it that way.
Because “Louie” is the correct pronunciation everywhere in the world.
Americans are the only people that pronounce “Louis” as if were “Lewis”, which is an entirely different name.
Heh, hope I haven’t been pronouncing the only two Americans I can think of with the name “Louis” wrong. Louis Armstrong, Joe Louis?
Edit: this is a genuine question!
It’s pronounced Loo-ee Armstrong and Joe Lew-is
really? spaniards say “luis” just like on sesame street.
Been getting the former right, but have always got the latter wrong. Not that his name comes up often, but still…:eek:
Everywhere in the English-speaking world, and the French speaking world.
The OP seems to be saying that there are English and French pronunciations of “Louis” - no, only Americans pronounce it phonetically.
The Spanish name Luis is pronounced LOO-ees; the English name Louis is pronounced LOO-ee.
My point being that the Royals aren’t using a fancy French pronunciation, they’re using the correct English pronunciation, and only Americans consider the phonetic pronunciation correct.
Except the American pronunciation appears to preserve an older pronunciation used by the English, as shown by a couple of the characters in two of Shakespeare’s plays.
Both Henry V and King John, feature a Dauphin of France. Historically, the real Dauphins these two characters were based on were named “Louis” (Louis, Dauphin of France, Duke of Guyenne in Henry V, and Louis VIII the Lion in King John, respectively) but Shakespeare refers to both of them as “Lewis.”
That suggests to me that the English in Shakespeare’s time pronounced the name by English phonetics, sounding the terminal “s”, but over time, the English may have adopted the more traditional French pronunciation of the name, which is now used by the Royals.
Louis is after his great-great-Uncle Louis Mountbatten, who was Charles’ favourite great-uncle and a big influence on the royals; he was killed by the IRA.
Just to confirm what others have said - in the UK Louis and Lewis are different names.
No - the name is completely Anglicised and written as Lewis, not Louis.
‘Jacques’ in Shakespeare’s plays is also pronounced Jay-kweez (you can tell by the rhymes and scansion).
Reading this makes me wish I could think of a good “Louie Louie” joke…
Just to confirm that in Ireland the name Louis is always pronounced “Louie” as in France. It is after all a French name.
If we were calling someone Lewis, as a first name or surname, we’d spell it Lewis.
And if you’re Inspector Morse, you pronounce the name as “Oh come on, Lewis.”
I didn’t know this. And when people mention “Louie” Armstrong, I thought it was a diminutive of the formal name “Louis”.
But everyone in the Anglophone world does pronounce the ‘s’ in Charles, right?
Complicating things, Louis Armstrong apparently did pronounce his name Lewis. See the beginning of Hello Dolly here:
And also this interview with him, 10 seconds in:
