Bode Plots come from Hendrik Bode... Whose name is pronounced.......

[Smokey]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendrik_Wade_Bode
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendrik_Wade_Bode#cite_note-Van_Valkenburg-1

"Van Valkenburg, M. E. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, "In memoriam: Hendrik W. Bode (1905-1982)", IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, Vol. AC-29, No 3., March 1984, pp. 193–194. Quote: "Something should be said about his name. To his colleagues at Bell Laboratories and the generations of engineers that have followed, the pronunciation is boh-dee. The Bode family preferred that the original Dutch be used as boh-dah."

It doesn't rhyme with "Mode" or "Code".  Just saying

::EDIT::
Damn, I just realized I posted this in the PCB CAD section.  No idea how that happened.  Should probably go in general.  Sorry everyone.
Who's != Whose.  Thanks.

[EEVblog]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendrik_Wade_Bode
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendrik_Wade_Bode#cite_note-Van_Valkenburg-1
"Van Valkenburg, M. E. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, "In memoriam: Hendrik W. Bode (1905-1982)", IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, Vol. AC-29, No 3., March 1984, pp. 193–194. Quote: "Something should be said about his name. To his colleagues at Bell Laboratories and the generations of engineers that have followed, the pronunciation is boh-dee. The Bode family preferred that the original Dutch be used as boh-dah."
It doesn't rhyme with "Mode" or "Code".  Just saying

 

This comes up every year without fail.
Van Valkenburg is wrong, or at least not fully correct.
"generations of engineers that have followed" do NOT universally pronounce it "boh-dee". You might very well do that in the United States, but the US is not the centre of the universe.
If you were raised as an engineer in Australia then you would pronounce is "Bowed" (as in "code"). That's what is used in industry here and how you are taught to pronounce it.
Welcome to the world of global language evolution.

People who say "Bowed" is "wrong", are clueless or deliberately ignorant about language evolution in the rest of the world.
Anyone who wants to be anal about it had better damn well start saying it "boh-dah" with original Dutch intonation (if any?) or STFU.

[Monkeh]

but the US is not the centre of the universe.

Wait, WHAT?! This cannot be.

[Smokey]

Every year?  While there are plenty of posts about "aluminum" and the letter "Z", I did a forum search and didn't see anyone else with this particular bit of info about Van Valkenburg quote about Bode's name.

While language can evolve, and groups of people are free to refer to things in whatever way they want, sometimes there's one right answer.  If something is named in honor of a real live dude, and that dude pronounced his name a certain way, then that's what it is. 

And I'm totally committed to saying "boh-dah" now

[Smokey]

Here is another interesting bit of word history, which is actually relevant to electronics since the word shows up a lot with reference to sticking parts in holes.  We have probably all seen both spellings used.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/how-thru-turned-into-through

The difference is that thru-hole parts were not named after Mr. Jonathan Thru.

[EEVblog]

Every year?  While there are plenty of posts about "aluminum" and the letter "Z", I did a forum search and didn't see anyone else with this particular bit of info about Van Valkenburg quote about Bode's name.

Happens every single time I mention it in a video. People trot out Wikipedia like it's the golden tablets.

While language can evolve, and groups of people are free to refer to things in whatever way they want, sometimes there's one right answer.  If something is named in honor of a real live dude, and that dude pronounced his name a certain way, then that's what it is. 

That's what it is to him, everyone else is free to pronounce it however they like. When a persons name becomes more than just their name by virtue of it becoming an industry term that everyone learns in engineering school, then you can't stop it evolving over time. We are talking the 1930's here, more than 4 generations!
[/i]Perhaps you support the C-16 bill in Canada where people will be forced by rule of law to address people with the correct pronoun?

I will continue to pronounce it the way I was taught and the way it's said by almost everyone in the industry in Australia and many other countries. I don't expect the Yanks to change to "boh-dah", just as no one should expect Australians and others to change from "Bowed"

And I'm totally committed to saying "boh-dah" now

Great, your choice, more power to you, just don't expect others to.

Rout vs root anyone?
Vi-Ah vs Vee-ah?

[Elf]

[...] To his colleagues at Bell Laboratories and the generations of engineers that have followed [...]

[...] You might very well do that in the United States, but the US is not the centre of the universe. [...]

No comment on the pronunciation of the name, and the U.S. certainly isn't the center (or centre) of the universe, but the old Bell Labs should sure make the short list of places that could be! It seems like the pure volume of innovation that came out of that place is almost singlehandedly responsible for the world of electronics and communications as we know it today.

Telephone networks with mechanical through electronic switching, leading into computer networking, all the Shannon/Hartley/Nyquist information theory stuff, UNIX, C/C++, the transistor, lasers, CCDs, solar cells; almost an endless list.

[scatha]

I don't know, I went to Uni in Oz and everyone pronounced it boh-dee including the control and system identification guys. It probably didn't hurt that Point Break had just come out, though. Booooodhiiiiiii!!!

[Noize]

 All things being said, it doesn't bode well for us.

[mtdoc]

It probably didn't hurt that Point Break had just come out, though. Booooodhiiiiiii!!!

Then there was the Buddhist satellite communications engineer who spent a lot of time with his network analyzer.  He liked the Bode-Sat-View....

[Smokey]

Every year?  While there are plenty of posts about "aluminum" and the letter "Z", I did a forum search and didn't see anyone else with this particular bit of info about Van Valkenburg quote about Bode's name.

Happens every single time I mention it in a video. People trot out Wikipedia like it's the golden tablets.

While language can evolve, and groups of people are free to refer to things in whatever way they want, sometimes there's one right answer.  If something is named in honor of a real live dude, and that dude pronounced his name a certain way, then that's what it is. 

That's what it is to him, everyone else is free to pronounce it however they like. When a persons name becomes more than just their name by virtue of it becoming an industry term that everyone learns in engineering school, then you can't stop it evolving over time. We are talking the 1930's here, more than 4 generations!
[/i]Perhaps you support the C-16 bill in Canada where people will be forced by rule of law to address people with the correct pronoun?

I will continue to pronounce it the way I was taught and the way it's said by almost everyone in the industry in Australia and many other countries. I don't expect the Yanks to change to "boh-dah", just as no one should expect Australians and others to change from "Bowed"

And I'm totally committed to saying "boh-dah" now

Great, your choice, more power to you, just don't expect others to.

Rout vs root anyone?
Vi-Ah vs Vee-ah?

I will apologize in advance for keeping this going since it most certainly is arguing over nothing.. but that's what the internet is for right?

So in this case the Wikipedia page actually sites a reference, so it's not just some random dude writing stuff on the interwebs it's actually a primary source with information about how the dude pronounced his name.  Don't try to discredit the primary source just because we got there through a Wikipedia page.

And this has nothing to do with legal requirements or language evolution, it has to do with respect for the guy that created something.  The thing was named in honor of a real guy and therefore to honor the guy you should pronounce his name correctly (or at least recognize you are pronouncing it incorrectly).  You don't have to do it, and if you don't do it you can still use his creation and people will probably know what you are talking about, but you are disrespecting Bode a bit by saying it doesn't matter at all.

Dave is the king of admitting he can't pronounce people's names, so I'm not sure why he's taking such a hard line on this.  Every time you say "Bode" you are pronouncing a dude's name.

[CatalinaWOW]

I don't really care what is correct, but I want to argue against a flip "well it is just language drift".  Simple language drift is why Italians and Spanish and French no longer speak Latin and can't talk easily with each other.  Engineers should be able to speak with each other.

So rather than voting to support the drifted pronunciation in the US or Australia or wherever, the choice that is hardest to argue with on any basis other than "my way is better than yours" is the pronunciation of the name.  I will try to do that henceforth.

[Alex Eisenhut]

who's = who is
whose = belongs

[timb]

I do tend to agree that Dave is on the wrong side of this one. It's someone's name, so there is one correct pronunciation: The way they said it. Period.

That said, it's not really a big deal. I mean, I pronounced it as Bode (rhymes with code) for many, many years, because the first time I was exposed to it was in books as a kid. It wasn't until much later that I decided to investigate these mysterious Boh-Dee Plots and find out if they were related to Bode Plots!

Now I pronounce it the correct way. It's still a hard habit to break.

[Alex Eisenhut]

So... Next up: Gauss.

[The Soulman]

Don't know what the fuzz is all about.
It's bode in dutch and that appears to be correct way of pronouncing it. 

btw: my son is called Hendrik   

[helius]

You're fighting a losing battle. Most people couldn't pronounce "Vincent Van Gogh" if they wanted to.

[sleemanj]

I do tend to agree that Dave is on the wrong side of this one. It's someone's name, so there is one correct pronunciation: The way they said it. Period.

[Neganur]

Buddha plot imho 

usually defuses the discussion with a smile

[EEVblog]

I do tend to agree that Dave is on the wrong side of this one. It's someone's name, so there is one correct pronunciation: The way they said it. Period.

 
You mean the way his family pronounced their own name, or the way that generations of Americans have butchered it into Boh-Dee?

Now I pronounce it the correct way. It's still a hard habit to break.

No, you don't, you are simply pronouncing it the American way. You are NOT pronouncing it the way his family pronounced their name.

You have absolutely no position to argue from here. Either you have to pronounce it the way his family did or you have to accept all evolutions of it.

[EEVblog]

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/eda/don't-reply-just-vote-please/

Ooh gee, looks who's winning! 

[Smokey]

It's 2am in part of the world.  Let the morning people vote before you call it over!
and... If you are wrong, just because everyone else may be wrong too doesn't make you less wrong...

Boh-dah for the win!

[EEVblog]

It's 2am in part of the world.  Let the morning people vote before you call it over!
and... If you are wrong, just because everyone else may be wrong too doesn't make you less wrong...

It doesn't matter who "wins", the point is that the Boh-dee fanboys think it's THE way to say it and it's how "everyone" says it.
Even if the results ends up 20% of community pronounce it Bowed/Boud that's still a huge number of engineers.
The poll backs up similar results from years of having debated this, it's ballpark half and half.
The Yanks get quite emabarresed when they realise the rest of the world is bigger and different than they are 

[Smokey]

The whole point of the thread was that no one is winning because everyone was wrong... boh-DUH!  This fun fact turned out not so fun I guess.

And why does it have to be a nationalistic thing?  No one was bashing Australia here.  Australians have just as much a right to mispronounce a guys name as Americans do. 

[timb]

I do tend to agree that Dave is on the wrong side of this one. It's someone's name, so there is one correct pronunciation: The way they said it. Period.

 
You mean the way his family pronounced their own name, or the way that generations of Americans have butchered it into Boh-Dee?

Now I pronounce it the correct way. It's still a hard habit to break.

No, you don't, you are simply pronouncing it the American way. You are NOT pronouncing it the way his family pronounced their name.

You have absolutely no position to argue from here. Either you have to pronounce it the way his family did or you have to accept all evolutions of it.

By correct, I meant regionally correct.

Actually, after thinking about it, my pronunciation is actually closer to Dah than Dee. I think the Dee is simply an effect of the typical American accents and speech patterns, as is quite often the case with foreign words. I've heard it pronounced several ways in between the two, generally based on regional accents.

Anyway, my point was that, in this case, technically there *is* a correct answer, and we all *should* make an effort to pronounce it correctly since it *is* a proper name. Practically, it comes down to the evolution of language and various accents and speech patterns.

So, technically you're (we're) wrong, practically it's fine.