It’s been my observation that many physicists today refer to Albert Einstein with the original German pronunciation (INE-shtine), whereas almost everyone else uses the anglicized INE-stine. This leads to two questions:
While he was alive and living in North America, did he have any preference for one or the other pronunciation of his last name?
How was he called by friends and family? Albert? Al? Bert? Bertie?
German-speakers would say Einshtein, non-German-speakers, Einstein. My guess is he had more important things on his mind and probably didn’t even notice.
My guess is all but his closest friends and family would have called him (Herr) Professor. Other than that I have no idea.
In direct address, just “Professor” or “Doctor” is probably more common than using the last name (at least currently in academia; I presume it was similar a century ago). But if you’re referring to him in the third person, you still need a name: “Where is Professor Einstein’s office?”, or “Have you seen Einstein’s latest paper?”.
I was just rereading Feynman’s “Surely you’re joking Mr. Feynman” and he talks about when he was giving a presentation when Einstein was in the audience. He referred to him as Professor Einstein.
Google Book Search knocks my effing socks off. cite. (the next page also)
According to Hawkwind, nobody ever called him Al.
Smart?
My high school art teacher claimed to have lived in the same neighborhood as Einstein. Had even had a few meals with him and his wife as a boy. He was Mr. Einstein.
According to the Google ad, he was called Jack the Cuddly Dog, and I think that would have been sa-weet.
I just called him “Al”… that nigga still owes me 12 bucks.
One of my favorite stories about Einstein was in a collection by Bennett Cerf (who knew Einstein personally, which gives it pretty good credibility).
During Einstein’s years at Princeton, the parents of an 8-year-old girl learned that she was stopping at the professor’s house for an hour after school every day.
They were of course flattered, but puzzled.
When they had a chance to meet Einstein (I believe the husband was Princeton faculty), they asked him what the two of them talked about.
Einstein replied, “She brings me cookies, and I do her arithmetic homework”.
MC Al.
I don’t know of any case where he expressed a preference, but his accent in English always remained heavily Germanic and I’d presume that he continued to use the German pronounciation himself.
The point that several posters have made about the greater use of formality in his lifetime cannot be emphasised enough. Even when people who knew him well referred to him it tended to be as “Einstein” or something similar. And he even tended to sign letters to close friends with some version of his full name.
For example, he conducted a decades-long correspondence with his close friend, colleague and, eventually, fellow exile Max Born. Almost invariably, their letters start as “Dear Born” and “Dear Einstein”, with Einstein signing them using either “Albert Einstein”, “A. Einstein” or occasionally “A.E.”. It’s the same pattern in his correspondence with Maurice Solovine, who was an old friend from his undergraduate days. Wives could be mentioned or write more informally, as was the case with Born’s wife Hedwig.
Unsurprisingly, one set of letters where there’s informality was in those from his first wife. She invented pet names for him: Johonesl and later Babu. And he signed his replies using these as well. In keeping with the point about wives tending to be more informal, you also find her calling him “Albert” in her letters to friends. As a generalisation, his relationship with his second wife was altogether more formal. I haven’t seen any letters to or from any of the women he had affairs with, but I’d expect them to be comparatively informal.
Of course, all the examples above involve people sticking to the German norms of the time. As for his time in the US, I’m sure some people called him, say, “Al” and he wasn’t the type to be bothered by such informality, but I suspect most strangers would have been too awed by his celebrity to try it. Meanwhile, I suspect most close friends and colleagues would have stuck to “Einstein” or possibly “Albert”.
That’s because nobody ever offered to be his bodyguard, or even his long-lost pal! 
I suspect his boss at his very first job was the first to say derisively “Hey, Einstein!”
“It’s pronounced FRAHNKENSHTEEN!!!”
Squee, your post is highly inappropriate for GQ. Do not do this again or you will lose your posting privileges.
You have been warned.
-xash
General Questions Moderator
I am pretty sure that Squee’s post was a reference to Chris Rock’s character in the movie Dogma. In the scene, Rock was referring to Jesus.
FWIW, Squee’s post was a paraphrase of a line spoken by Rufus, the 13th Apostle (Chris Rock) in the Kevin Smith movie Dogma. That’s more or less how Rufus answers when he’s asked if he knew Jesus.
On preview: what Scott Plaid said.