Most Commonly Mispronounced Mathematicians

[hsetennis]

Title is pretty self-explanatory. I'm compiling a short list.
The ones I could think of:

Descartes = Daycart
Euler = Oiler
Erdos = Airdish
Riemann = Reemahn
Lie = Lee

Any further additions that would help younger math students?

 

[phyzguy]

Are you saying your phonetic pronunciations are correct or incorrect?

 

[EvenSteven]

So are you saying we need to enunciate their name like it sounds in their native language?

French is my first language and I wouldn't say Daycart is a wrong pronunciation. A lot of phonemes in french and other languages don't have an exact replica in english.

Descartes in french sounds like Dehhh-Kah-Hrt. Of course the r in french doesn't sound like "are" like it does in english, and it's kind of hard to explain through text for someone like me who doesn't know phonetic spelling.

 

[hsetennis]

Are you saying your phonetic pronunciations are correct or incorrect?

I hope they're close to correct.

 

[DrewD]

Those are the common Anglicized versions of their names. I assume hsetennis isn't expecting everyone to attempt perfect accents, but a lot of people pronounce Erdos err-dose which is not even close.


Fourier$\approx$For ee ay
but that one might be a lost cause

And for physics
Chandrasekhar=?

For Chandrasekhar, I had an Indian professor that was telling us about him and halfway through we stopped him and realized we actually knew who he was talking about, but none of us recognized the pronunciation. But then I forgot it.

 

[hsetennis]

So are you saying we need to enunciate their name like it sounds in their native language?

Not exactly enunciated, but I would like to provide an approximate English pronunciation for those who don't speak French/German/Dutch/Norwegian.

I am aware that the common french R is a guttural consonant, but this is uncommon to us Americans, so I didn't bother to go too deep into it.

 

[hsetennis]

Those are the common Anglicized versions of their names. I assume hsetennis isn't expecting everyone to attempt perfect accents, but a lot of people pronounce Erdos err-dose which is not even close.


Fourier$\approx$For ee ay
but that one might be a lost cause

And for physics
Chandrasekhar=?

For Chandrasekhar, I had an Indian professor that was telling us about him and halfway through we stopped him and realized we actually knew who he was talking about, but none of us recognized the pronunciation. But then I forgot it.

Ah, Fourier is another good one, thanks. As for Chandrasekhar, I feel your pain. Even as a native Hindi speaker, I had trouble recognizing his name in a spoken setting for two reasons. Between Indian languages, there is a wide variation in the pronunciation, despite having the same script. Also, there is somewhat of an over-anglicization of his name (not complaining, I'm guilty of this too), from the "t∫"[ch] to a "∫"[sh] and the "ər"[ur] to "ɑr"[are]. What has always irked me about the spelling is that the English spelling uses an "s" whereas the pronunciation is "sh".

 

[AlephZero]

What has always irked me about the spelling is that the English spelling uses an "s" whereas the pronunciation is "sh".

The basic problem is transliterating from a phonetic language with a huge alphabet (about 50 letters compared iwith 26)

It it was spelled Chandrashekhar, a "well informed" english speaker would probably read it as Chandras-hekhar. The same issue applies to "th" (as in lighthouse, not as in bathroom).

 

[hsetennis]

The basic problem is transliterating from a phonetic language with a huge alphabet (about 50 letters compared iwith 26)

It it was spelled Chandrashekhar, a "well informed" english speaker would probably read it as Chandras-hekhar. The same issue applies to "th" (as in lighthouse, not as in bathroom).

I hadn't considered this situation. Now that you mention it, I can understand the difficulty if one mistranslated an aspirated labial "ph" to the labiodental "f".

 

[haruspex]

For Chandrasekhar, I had an Indian professor that was telling us about him and halfway through we stopped him and realized we actually knew who he was talking about, but none of us recognized the pronunciation. But then I forgot it.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/ChandrasekharPronunciation.ogg

 

[mfb]

Here is a tricky one: Euclid

 

[hsetennis]

Here is a tricky one: Euclid

It's not yoo-klid?

 

[Fredrik]

Lebesgue, Poincaré,...pretty much any French name.

Noether.

http://translate.google.com/#fr/en/lebesgue
http://translate.google.com/#fr/en/poincaré
http://translate.google.com/#de/en/noether

If you want a hear the pronunciation, click the listen button (speaker symbol) in the left box. If you want a laugh, do it in the right box.

 

[Fredrik]

It's not yoo-klid?

I went to Wikipedia and copied the ancient greek version of his name, Εὐκλείδης. Then I pasted it into the box at google translate. It suggested that I change it to Ευκλείδης, so I did.

http://translate.google.com/#el/en/Ευκλείδης

Sounds like eff-clee-these, or at least it would, if it hadn't been for the fact that the English L sound is pretty different from the L sound that most European languages have in common. I would however argue that "Euclid" isn't his actual name, but his English nickname, and that this makes it OK to pronounce it youclid.

 

[SteamKing]

I went to Wikipedia and copied the ancient greek version of his name, Εὐκλείδης. Then I pasted it into the box at google translate. It suggested that I change it to Ευκλείδης, so I did.

http://translate.google.com/#el/en/Ευκλείδης

Sounds like eff-cleethese.

There is a variation in the sounds represented by modern Greek letters to the sounds which linguists think were represented in ancient Greek. If you were to ask an ancient Greek about the man known as 'Euclid' using the modern Greek pronunciation, he might find you hard to follow, although the written form of the name 'Euclid' has not changed.

 

[lisab]

Lebesgue, Poincaré,...pretty much any French name.

Noether.

http://translate.google.com/#fr/en/lebesgue
http://translate.google.com/#fr/en/poincaré
http://translate.google.com/#de/en/noether

If you want a hear the pronunciation, click the listen button (speaker symbol) in the left box. If you want a laugh, do it in the right box.

The right box pronunciations sound a lot like how I'd say it

 

[phosgene]

Leibniz. It's Lyb-nitz, not Leeb-nitz! Somebody should start a similar thread for physicists. There are a few of those that I can think of..

 

[czelaya]

When I took a course in General Relativity as an undergraduate I heard a fellow student call the Ricci tensor the "Rikki tensor".

 

[Fredrik]

The right box pronunciations sound a lot like how I'd say it

I don't think there is an "americanization" of "Poincaré" that that sounds like the name, so it's understandable.

The only one that actually made me laugh was "Lebesgue", because Google pronounced it Leb-saig.

 

[Andre]

Is there a point (pwhah in French)? We lived in Canada some 35 years ago and my spouse had to see the doc for a first time. So she waited patiently until her name was called. But that never happened. Finally the waiting room was empty and the assistant came to her asking whilst pointing to a name on a sheet of paper: "Is this you? ". Yes it is", said my spouse. But "why", said the assistant: "we have called you a dozen times". "No you didn't" said my spouse.

 

[WannabeNewton]

I feel like the french names are the easiest to pronounce. When it comes to russian and german names, I throw my hands up in defeat xD.

 

[Tosh5457]

Title is pretty self-explanatory. I'm compiling a short list.
The ones I could think of:

Descartes = Daycart
Euler = Oiler
Erdos = Airdish
Riemann = Reemahn
Lie = Lee

Any further additions that would help younger math students?

Actually some of those are wrong, the problem is that Americans and English can't say 'r' like in non-English European languages, so they aren't able to say Descartes and Riemann correctly. Erdos isn't pronounced that way either, that's only how Britons and Americans say it. It's Eh-rdus

 

[humanino]

Not a mathematician, rather a physicist, but : a controversial pronunciation.

Louis de Broglie

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/De_Broglie.ogg

 

[Cthugha]

I heard several funny attempts of trying to pronounce L’Hospital ( [lopi'tal]).

On the physics side August Beer has nothing to with drinks (pronounced similarly to the English "bare").

Rudolf Mössbauer is another big challenge for an English tongue.The umlaut sounds a bit like the "u" in "burning" and the "au" sound like the "ow" in "vowel". mess - bow - aah is a rough description of what it actually sounds like.

 

[Andre]

Okay not a mathematician, but Goethe is also a very tough one. Many taxi drivers can tell stories in just about every German city about being unable to find 'djozs' street.

 

[hsetennis]

I heard several funny attempts of trying to pronounce L’Hospital ( [lopi'tal]).

On the physics side August Beer has nothing to with drinks (pronounced similarly to the English "bare").

Rudolf Mössbauer is another big challenge for an English tongue.The umlaut sounds a bit like the "u" in "burning" and the "au" sound like the "ow" in "vowel". mess - bow - aah is a rough description of what it actually sounds like.

The Chem PhD that taught me Beer's law had pronounced it like the drink thus I was a bit doubtful, so I did some internetting and turns out that all of the chemists that I know have been pronouncing it wrong! That's a real eye-opener.

 

[hsetennis]

I would however argue that "Euclid" isn't his actual name, but his English nickname, and that this makes it OK to pronounce it youclid.

I always was under the assumption that the Greeks' names were Latinized and Euclid is the Latin version of Euclides. Does this make Euclid his Latin nickname or is this still his English nickname?

 

[FeynmanIsCool]

Laplace! (I've heard la-place)...

 

[Fredrik]

I always was under the assumption that the Greeks' names were Latinized and Euclid is the Latin version of Euclides. Does this make Euclid his Latin nickname or is this still his English nickname?

I don't know, but if "Euclid" is Latin, does that mean that we should pronounce it the way Julius Ceasar did?

 

[strangerep]

Any non-Europeans here know how to pronounce "Wouthuysen"?
(As in the Foldy–Wouthuysen transformation)