Most Commonly Mispronounced Mathematicians

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The discussion revolves around the common mispronunciations of mathematicians' names, highlighting the differences between Anglicized versions and their original pronunciations. Participants suggest that many English speakers struggle with names like "Erdos," which is often mispronounced as "err-dose," and "Descartes," which should be closer to "Dehhh-Kah-Hrt." The conversation also touches on the challenges of transliterating names from languages with different phonetic systems, such as Hindi and French, leading to variations in pronunciation. Additionally, names like "Chandrasekhar" and "Lebesgue" are noted for their complexity, with participants sharing personal experiences of mispronunciation. The thread emphasizes the importance of recognizing and approximating original pronunciations to aid understanding among younger math students.
hsetennis
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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?
 
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Are you saying your phonetic pronunciations are correct or incorrect?
 
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.
 
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phyzguy said:
Are you saying your phonetic pronunciations are correct or incorrect?

I hope they're close to correct.
 
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.
 
EvenSteven said:
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.
 
DrewD said:
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".
 
hsetennis said:
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).
 
AlephZero said:
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".
 
  • #11
Here is a tricky one: Euclid
 
  • #12
mfb said:
Here is a tricky one: Euclid

It's not yoo-klid?
 
  • #14
hsetennis said:
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.
 
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  • #15
Fredrik said:
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.
 
  • #16
  • #17
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..
 
  • #18
When I took a course in General Relativity as an undergraduate I heard a fellow student call the Ricci tensor the "Rikki tensor".
 
  • #19
lisab said:
The right box pronunciations sound a lot like how I'd say it :redface:
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.
 
  • #20
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.
 
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  • #21
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.
 
  • #22
hsetennis said:
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
 
  • #24
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.
 
  • #25
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.
 
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  • #26
Cthugha said:
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.
 
  • #27
Fredrik said:
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?
 
  • #28
Laplace! (I've heard la-place)...
 
  • #29
hsetennis said:
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? :smile:
 
  • #30
Any non-Europeans here know how to pronounce "Wouthuysen"?
(As in the Foldy–Wouthuysen transformation)
 
  • #31
Cauchy

Pronounced "ko-she", not "couch-e"
 
  • #33
Fredrik said:
I don't know, but if "Euclid" is Latin, does that mean that we should pronounce it the way Julius Ceasar did? :smile:

Euclid is Greek. Personally I pronounce it "yoo-clid".

P.S: Today, Julius Caesar's name is not pronounced how it was in Roman times as it was spelt Iulius Caesar. The Romans had no "j", they used an "I" in consonant form and the "ae" was pronounced as "eye" not "aye" or "ee".
 
  • #34
L4xord said:
P.S: Today, Julius Caesar's name is not pronounced how it was in Roman times as it was spelt Iulius Caesar. The Romans had no "j", they used an "I" in consonant form and the "ae" was pronounced as "eye" not "aye" or "ee".

Is that like in the Indiana Jones and the last crusade movie, where Indy falls through the tiled walkway cause he forgot that Jehovah starts with an I?:redface:

Euclid is Greek. Personally I pronounce it "yoo-clid".

I think everyone pretty much knows how to pronounce Euclid these days. If they didn't, then this guy might not have sold so many books, because no one would have laughed at the play on words, and would have just moved on to the next book.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1416588280/?tag=pfamazon01-20
 
  • #35
In Germany, Euclid (here: "Euklid") starts like "Oil", similar to Euler. As the original name is Greek, I think different languages found different ways to pronounce it.

strangerep said:
Any non-Europeans here know how to pronounce "Wouthuysen"?
(As in the Foldy–Wouthuysen transformation)
Dutch pronunciation can be tricky, even for Europeans.
 
  • #37
Since this thread is expanding from maths to physics guys, let's not forget famous computer scientists...

I've thinking in particular of "Bjarne Stroustrup" (creator of C++). Even after I heard him pronounce it for me several times, I still couldn't quite make my non-Danish speech organs reproduce it accurately... :smile:
 
  • #38
That one needs a link: http://www.stroustrup.com/pronounciation.wav

I think an English speaker who just says "Byarna Strostrup" is getting close enough. It's not a complete butchering of the the name. So it's hardly worth the effort to try to get it right. I know that I'd rather have English speakers say "Frederick" than try to say http://translate.google.se/#sv/en/Fredrik and have it come out "Fyee-jerk" or something like that.

Danish is a fun language for us Swedes. The words are pretty much the same, but it's very hard to understand what they're saying because of the pronunciation. It's like a maximally distorted version of Swedish. Norwegian on the other hand, is more like a humorous interpretation of Swedish, it's like listening to Indians speaking English. They probably feel that way about us too.

A couple of weeks ago I saw Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Danish) talking to a Swedish and a Norwegian guy on TV. They all spoke in their native languages, and they all seemed to understand each other. When NCW spoke, I wasn't able to understand enough that I would have been able to answer his questions, but then I'm one of those people who sometimes have difficulties understanding Skånska, the dialect spoken in the south of Sweden.
 
  • #39
Descartes is pronounced Day-ca-rrrrrr-t.

The ''r'' seems to be the toughest sound for english speakers.
 
  • #40
Your name sounds like a character from Final Fantasy xD. But me being Indian, I have it really bad. I had to go through 18 years of school with people pronouncing my name in every possible wrong way and I would be too embarrassed to actually correct them lol. Thankfully in college, professors don't really make it their duty to learn names :). Honestly I've heard my name mispronounced so much that I don't even know myself what it should sound like anymore. So the pronunciation here: http://translate.google.com/#de/fr/Venkatesh I don't even know if its right or wrong anymore after 18 years of this :[
 
  • #41
Venkatesh? Why is that hard to pronounce?
 
  • #42
reenmachine said:
Venkatesh? Why is that hard to pronounce?
Idk go ask my secondary education teachers :frown:
 
  • #43
WannabeNewton said:
So the pronunciation here: http://translate.google.com/#de/fr/Venkatesh
Did you try a few different languages and found that the German one pronounced your name the best? The French one is hilarious, Vinka-yeutsh.
 
  • #44
Fredrik said:
Did you try a few different languages and found that the German one pronounced your name the best? The French one is hilarious, Vinka-yeutsh.

I'm a french speaker and without ever hearing that name I would pronounce it

Venn - ka - tesh

I see no reason to change venn for vinn and tesh for yeutsh.This is confusing , why a y here instead of t? Makes no sense to change a t into a y in french unless its the real pronunciation in the foreign language.
 
  • #45
WBN: Don't feel bad , I'm pretty sure 80-90% of english speakers wouldn't be able to pronounce my name neither.

The ''r'' sound is pretty much a deal breaker.
 
  • #46
DiracPool said:
Is that like in the Indiana Jones and the last crusade movie, where Indy falls through the tiled walkway cause he forgot that Jehovah starts with an I?:redface:

Indeed it is. The Latin translation is IEHOVA
 
  • #47
WannabeNewton said:
Honestly I've heard my name mispronounced so much that I don't even know myself what it should sound like anymore. So the pronunciation here: http://translate.google.com/#de/fr/Venkatesh I don't even know if its right or wrong anymore after 18 years of this :[

Fredrik said:
Did you try a few different languages and found that the German one pronounced your name the best? The French one is hilarious, Vinka-yeutsh.

This one is closer to the correct pronunciation:

http://translate.google.com/#de/fr/venkataysh
 
  • #48
strangerep said:
Any non-Europeans here know how to pronounce "Wouthuysen"?
(As in the Foldy–Wouthuysen transformation)

Wah-toy-sen (or wo-toy-sen?)
 
  • #49
So how do you pronounce Banach?
 
  • #50
I think it's between banana and Johann Sebastian Bach.
 

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