Famous people whose names are commonly mispronounced badly......

[Kjelt]

and a few more names.....

[rrinker]

lol, I was thinking "will.i.am"... Come on dude. Just accept that your name is William 

 Except in France

http://9gag.com/gag/awrD4EW/on-french-tv-they-translate-will-i-am-s-name

[george.b]

Nyquist.

[timb]

Inventor Ernst Siemens

Yes, this one is a mouthful... It's been my experience most people dislike ending up with a mouthful of Siemens! *Rimshot*

[Kjelt]

German names are difficult for americans? There was this (famous) singer that sings "Danke Schön" and he prenounces it as sheeen instead of sheun it sounds so wrong as if someone calls Trump, Tramp.

[Kleinstein]

English speaking people seem to have problem with German names - can't understand that.

It depends on were you come from - except you come from somewhere near the Eyjafjallajökull

[Smokey]

Socrates

(a lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed)

"So-Krates"

dust..... wind... DUDE!!

[rrinker]

 Not all of us do, but then I come from a German background. I know exactly what song you are referring to - Wayne Newton. And it sound wrong to me, too. I think what throws native English speakers is the IE and EI letter combinations. In English how you pronounce works with those letter combinations is an "it depends". Auf Deutsch, alles ordnung and it's always spelled whichever way it is said. None of that "I before E except after C or when sounded like a as in neighbor and weigh"  which is not 100% accurate itself, but it's what we teach all the kids, or used to anyway. Now I think they don't care how kids spell words if it's close. It's the result of so many different languages going into the makeup of what we call "English". Want a real challenge, look at Old English and Middle English.
 Note my analysis is based on what I learned in 5 years of studying German in school. Can hardly relate my family background as we a PA Dutch and compared to proper German grammar the way my family spoke (and everyone else I knew that spoke PA Dutch) was akin to the ebonics version of English. I learned to understand purely for the ability to snoop - my grandparents would speak dutch (German - silly English heard 'Deutsch" and said, oh, yes, Dutch, got it) with relatives when they wanted to have a conversation without little ears hearing anything. They did like to complain about my uncle and his family a lot.  In my immediate family it ended with my Grandparents my Mom and Uncle both could understand but not speak it. There is a local college that offers a course in speaking PA Dutch, which I keep meaning to do but never seem to have the time. It's truly dying out as the older generations are no more.

[rrinker]

 Speaking of Greek names - my exe, who is a teacher, when she first read the Harry Potter books, asked me how you pronounce Hermione's name. Which sort of blew my mind because her mother's name is Penelope - pronounced the proper way, not "Pene-lope"

[Kjelt]

my grandparents would speak dutch (German - silly English heard 'Deutsch" and said, oh, yes, Dutch, got it)

Actually this was explained around Christmass on one of our radio channels. The cause of the question was that in our national antem there is a sentence that states that our kings great great great .....great father the Prince of Orange was from german blood (duitschen bloed). But this was also wrongly translated, it should have said from Dietsen bloed.

Now Diets was the general language in Holland and Belgium from 1200 to around 1550. It had nothing to do with German besides it came from the German language even much longer before that.
In the 17th century it was all mixed up and so the English weren't that bad, they just could not pronounce Diets, so they made it Dutch and unfortunately even our own people made it Duits which is German so it is in our national antem.
Oh well in the mean time our passed Queen mother and former Queen both married a German so who cares.

no english wiki for this page unfortunately:
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diets

[rrinker]

 The PA Dutch though are mostly Germans. Many from southwestern Germany, but plenty from other areas. In my particular home town, mostly from Moravia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Dutch

The Old Order Amish and Mennonite communities may be the only ones left where kids are taught German dialect. I don't know anyone of my generation who is a fluent speaker and my understanding is only limited, and I'm not sure my boys actually know the silly jokes my grandfather taught me. My Uncle had a project going where he was going around to his aunts and uncles while they were still alive having them speak dutch and recording it along with repeating what they said in English. Since he passed I don't know what became of the tapes.

[Kjelt]

Ah ok now I understand, that dutch was the interpretation of deutsch, thats an interesting part of history.
I am not very familiar with that part of history, what I saw sometimes on documentaries that some groups there still live as in the 19th century, like no computers or cars etc.

[timb]

Ah ok now I understand, that dutch was the interpretation of deutsch, thats an interesting part of history.
I am not very familiar with that part of history, what I saw sometimes on documentaries that some groups there still live as in the 19th century, like no computers or cars etc.

Yes, that would be the Old Order Amish. There are also Old Order Mennonites, which hold similar beliefs.

In fact, we have some Old Order Mennonites where I'm at here in Virginia and they seem like good people. My parents actually hired a group of them to build a barn on their property last year and man can those guys build! They got it finished in a weekend. By hand. (As in no power tools.)

I've got to say, I admire being able to live that kind of lifestyle in the face of all our modern comforts.

[Cerebus]

English speaking people seem to have problem with German names - can't understand that.

I've known quite a few German people with exactly the opposite problem. I used to have a colleague, Jan Czmok*, who would insist on pronouncing my name, Ian, as "Aye-An". The same man had no problem pronouncing "e-mail" in English but even when I suggested he called me "e-Jan" and sped it up a bit, he still couldn't get it right.

If it gets too bad I just tell Germans to call me Jan; "Ian, wünschen sie noch ein bier?" and "Jan, wünschen sie noch ein bier?" both sound close enough that it'll usually get my attention.

My surname seems to be problematic for many Germanic speakers too; "Mason" often comes out sounding like the German surname Meisen or Meissen. There are Germans out there who think that, despite being British, my name is Jan Maurer as I've sometimes just given up and adopted a German name.

*Yan Schmock in English orthography.

[CatalinaWOW]

The PA Dutch though are mostly Germans. Many from southwestern Germany, but plenty from other areas. In my particular home town, mostly from Moravia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Dutch

The Old Order Amish and Mennonite communities may be the only ones left where kids are taught German dialect. I don't know anyone of my generation who is a fluent speaker and my understanding is only limited, and I'm not sure my boys actually know the silly jokes my grandfather taught me. My Uncle had a project going where he was going around to his aunts and uncles while they were still alive having them speak dutch and recording it along with repeating what they said in English. Since he passed I don't know what became of the tapes.

My ancestors come from that region.  It is my understanding that speaking Pennsylvania Dutch died rather suddenly during the great unpleasantness of the late 1930s and early 1940s.  No one wanted to do anything that would associate them with the little Austrian.

[vk6zgo]

Anyone French.

Laplace, Fermat, Descartes, the composer Saint-saens. French names usually look like they should be pronouncable to an English-speaker, as they lack any weird characters or pairings and are not laden with Zs everywhere. But they are not pronounced at all like an English-speaker would.

They write words with similar spelling to Italian words,but unlike them,have half the word "silent".

Another thing is,where people try too hard to pronounce names in a "French way".
Moet,as in "Moet & Chandon" is often pronounced "Moh-Ay" by such folk,where in real life,he was a Flemish bloke & pronounced it as it was written.

Where there are thousands of people with a given surname,they are unlikely to all pronounce their names in the same way.

"Captain Mainwaring" in "Dad's Army" wanted to be pronounced "Mannering",but the late AFL Football player Chris Mainwaring pronounced it as it was spelt.

Some distant relatives of mine rejoice in the name "Death".
The older generations  pronounced like the end of life,but others opted for "D'Ath".

Featherstone-Haugh doesn't look at all like "Fanshaw".
There are a lot more plain old Fanshaws in the phone book.

Our PM in the 1950s,Bob Menzies,made the comment  that his last name really should be pronounced "Mingas".
This was regarded as incredibly pretentious by the general public,who promptly nicknamed him "Ming The Merciless"!

[steverino]

certainly, Bob Widlar comes to mind.

[b_force]

Jeeeez, so many.
Mostly French and Dutch

To give one; Christiaan Huygens

[Cerebus]

Some distant relatives of mine rejoice in the name "Death".
The older generations  pronounced like the end of life,but others opted for "D'Ath".

Featherstone-Haugh doesn't look at all like "Fanshaw".
There are a lot more plain old Fanshaws in the phone book.

I once knew a man with a broad Yorkshire accent who rejoiced in the name Jack Death; there's something so prosaic about "Th' name's Death, Jack Death" delivered in that accent, that it completely takes the sting out of the name.

I used to share a house with a Terry Featherstone who pronounced it as you would read it, bit of bird, bit of rock.

Our PM in the 1950s,Bob Menzies,made the comment  that his last name really should be pronounced "Mingas".
This was regarded as incredibly pretentious by the general public,who promptly nicknamed him "Ming The Merciless"!

It's just the normal Scottish pronunciation (whence the name comes), sounds closer to "Mingis" to my ear. Mingin' Menzies is the obvious Scot's schoolboy nickname - Minging being Scot's for "Gosh, what an awful smell" as in "Youse futball kit, that's mingin' that is".

There's something about the tendency of certain classes of the British to "posh up" names by using alternative pronunciations that really annoys me. Ralph Fiennes ("Raif Fines") is a case in point. Timothy Spall also named his son Raif, but had the good grace to spell it the way it was intended to be said. First case, terribly, terribly posh parents; second case, gor-blimey Londoner like m'self.

[MarkS]

Just remembered: Pierre Bézier, "inventor" of the ubiquitous Bézier curve. I never knew whether it was "Bay-zeer" or "Buh-zeer" or "Bee-zeer", so I asked someone who speaks French (after mispronouncing it for two decades). It's "Bay-zee-A (long A)". Huh. Would never have guessed!

[Cerebus]

Just remembered: Pierre Bézier, "inventor" of the ubiquitous Bézier curve. I never knew whether it was "Bay-zeer" or "Buh-zeer" or "Bee-zeer", so I asked someone who speaks French (after mispronouncing it for two decades). It's "Bay-zee-A (long A)". Huh. Would never have guessed!

I, for one, aren't quite sure what your intent is there. By "long A" do you mean the letter "ay" or the phoneme "aah"?

I'd render my pronunciation of Bézier  as beh-zee-ay.

An aside - For a while in England, the generation in school after mine were first taught to write in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and then transitioned to standard English spelling after they'd got the hang of things. On the surface this sounds like a stupid idea, even if you can grasp the underlying intent. However at times like this it would be really useful if there was wider understanding of IPA so that we could use it to describe pronunciations instead of using ad-hoc versions hacked largely out of English orthography.

[Refrigerator]

[MarkS]

I, for one, aren't quite sure what your intent is there. By "long A" do you mean the letter "ay" or the phoneme "aah"?

Really? Elementary school English. Long A - 'ay'. Short A - 'aah'. I wasn't sure how to "spell" the letter. "Aye" is pronounced "eye" and I couldn't think of anything else.

[helius]

Calling it "long A" will really get you into trouble when you get to Latin or Greek or study poetic meter. I suppose that explains why schools in England (still based around the Quadrivium to some extent?) would call it differently.

[bitwelder]

Edsger W. Dijkstra