Pantene, Nissan, Nike, and plenty of other product brands have different pronunciations in different parts of the English speaking world. Why is this? Would the brand owners not want to keep this uniform?
Can they? Seems like it just happens, and they can’t control how people are talking overseas (wherever that is). Or at home. Both sides of the Atlantic are very adept at messing up pronunciation.
Or, British people can’t pronounce Japanese or Portuguese/Tupi (Jaguar), etc. as well as North Americans*, because they have fewer geographical/cultural links.
Conversely, Nike was given an American pronunciation instead of the Greek one. It’s been long enough that it’s not changing soon.
*NB: there is a difference between “right pronunciation in the original language” and “less wrong pronunciation.”
Also, Nissan’s predecessor Datsun is actually pronounced okay in American English (and maybe UK, no idea what it sounded like there). It Japan it was “dattosan,” not “da-tsun.”
I agree. Companies may prefer to have consistency of pronunciation, but they can never enforce it if the local people decide otherwise.
I remember when the Hotel Ibis chain was established in Australia. The owners said they were determined to use the French pronunciation EEH-BEE. It didn’t take long for them to relent. Australians just weren’t prepared to change from their normal pronunciation.
"You say tomato . . ."
Given that speakers of different varieties of English pronounce common English words differently, it would be wildly unrealist of a brand owner to think that he could get them all to pronounce his brand in the same way.
Or they may decide that customer perception is important enough to override the pronunciation of the brand name. Hyundai currently call themselves hi-un-die in their uk TV ads. A couple of years back, they pronounced it differently - I imagine this is a conscious decision to accommodate the customer
Except I’m talking about things the brand owner could control like the television and radio advertising for their products. Nissan is universally called “Niss-an” in Ireland and the UK in their adverts yet “Nee-san” in US advertising. I know it’s different because it involves actual name changes but products like Oil Of Olay and Cif have successfully rebranded in these isles to make them more in line with international branding so it doesn’t seem impossible for the brands to impose a single pronunciation. Perhaps it’s just not considered a good use of resources to attempt to impose that uniformity.
Mangetout, I noticed that pronunciation shift you’re talking about and it’s a good point, maybe consumers just wouldn’t budge from Hi-un-dye so they went back to it.
Producers don’t want to piss off consumers, and once a particular pronunciation is established in a particular market, attempting to get people to change it is risky; if you ostentatiously flood the Irish market with ads that call the cars “Neesan”, people will feel they are being lectured to, and perhaps that a negative judgment is being passed about the way they pronounce the brand. And they won’t like that.
Besides, why does the producer care how they pronounce the brand, as long as they buy the product?
Jaguar tried (it seems to me that I haven’t heard it in a while, but maybe I’ve just grown used to it) to with commercials that made the word three syllables long (jag-you-are vs. jag-whar) and everybody I knew made fun of them for it.
My mom had reason for many years to work on a project related to Adidas with people in Germany. After all that time she said the Americans and Germans never did merge together on how to pronounce it (the Germans should have won implicitly).
They probably would, but pronunciations can take root before or in spite of massive audio-media advertising, and advertising priority goes:
1a. Get people to buy our product!
1b. Make sure there is no doubt what brand we’re advertising.
…
48. Teach people our preferred pronunciation of the brand name.
How do Germans pronounce it? I hear anything in the American pronunciation that wouldn’t also be standard German. A makes an “ah” sound. D makes a “d” sound. I makes an “ee” sound. S makes an “s” sound. All that’s left is syllabic stress.
That’s a good point about pissing off consumers. Since they care about their brand having a uniform name as with the Cif/Olay examples I thought they’d care about pronunication too.
American: uh-DEE-duhz
German AH-di-dahz
Or at least so my mom conveyed was how all the Germans pronounced it. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard a German pronounce it myself. (Her first story was was about how someone called her to talk about Adidas and she had no idea what they meant because of the pronunciation.)
And in Sweden Nike is pronounced as rhyming with bike, by many people who obviously are unaware of the origin of the name.
Interesting. The German way is how Brits pronounce it, yet I have always heard that we (Brits) pronounce it wrong. Maybe we were right all along …
We used to pronounce it wrong - I remember back in the 70s we all called it ‘Ad-DEE-das’, but now most people say ‘AH-di-das’. Presumably a good example of TV/radio advertising having an effect. I specifically remember a brand campaign which talked about the founder, Adi Dassler, which may have helped plant the pronunciation in Brits’ minds.
Same was true of Nike - we used to pronounce it like ‘bike’ but now say ‘Nikey’.
If “we” is Brits, I’m a child of the 70s and have never come across “Ad-DEE-das” in the UK.
I’ve been out of the country too long to comment on whether “Nikey” is common now.
Do any English-speaking countries routinely pronounce “Porsche” (porsh-uh) and “Citroën” (sit-row-en) correctly? If I have indeed got the correct pronunciations there, which I probably haven’t.
Nike rhymes with Bike, Adidas has several pronunications here.
Porsche is Porsh, Citroën is Citron, Peugout is Pew-sjoe. 
Grew up on west coast of U.S. I’m about 50/50 on whether I say “porsh” or “porsh-uh.” Don’t know I go back and forth.
In high school I got annoyed at a porsche driving teacher who pronounced my home state as “Warshington” so I started referring to his “pawsh” on the theory that if he could add extra R’s, I could take them away. But he didn’t care. Stupid teachers and their indifference to righteous youth anger.
Peugot is “poo-gzo” not “pew-gzo” to me. Citroën was just a word I decided to never say out loud as I had no idea.
In my US experience, all ordinary folks say “porsh”. People who are car enthusiasts, Porshe owners, Porshe dealers, aftermarket parts folks etc, tend to say “porsh-uh”. It’s about 60/40 or 70/30 in favor of porsh-uh. It’s not universal.
In my US experience, nobody ever says “Citroën” at all. But if they did it’d be SIT-rone where rone sounds like bone. Or at least that’s what one heard back in the 60s & 70s when such things could still occasionally be seen or talked about in the US.
Late edit: Now had I spelled Porsche correctly I’d have had a *wee bit *more credibility.