Wolfram

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>... One thing that interests me is that both Walt Wolfram and his
>wife Marge pronounce WOLFRAM as /wUlfr at m/--with more or less equal stress on
>both syllables, and with a very definite ashe in the second syllable. I have
>not asked them why they use this un-American pronunciation, but I suspect
>that it is so that people will have some sense of how it is spelled--/wUlfrm/
>doesn't give any indication of what the word looks like. Or maybe it is
>because they grew up in a German-descendant community where the vowel would
>not have been lost in the second syllable. At any rate, I doubt that their
>pronunciation comes about because of French influence.

In this case I would speculate that the name is pronounced like
'wolf'+'ram' simply because that's how the majority of Americans would read it.

One could perform the experiment -- asking 10-20 random persons to read the
name.

What percentage of the population recognizes the word 'wolfram'? 1% maybe?
I've very rarely heard it spoken, even though I took a chemistry degree
('tungsten' is usual). [When I have heard it, it's always been /wUlfr at m/
with @ = schwa, although the RH dictionary also lists the 'German-style'
pronunciation /volfr at m/.]

-- Doug Wilson