Pontius "Pie Late"

[James Harbeck]

>At 4/7/2007 10:52 AM, Jon L wrote:
>>As I understand it, the exercise was created by a man whose surname
>>was/ is pronounced in English as  / paI'lati /.  Not connected with Pontius.
>
>So in either case "Pilates" is incorrect? It should be either
>"Pilate's" [exercises] (if he didn't spell his name with an "s") or
>"Pilates'" (if he did)!  :-)

Unless he intended any given exercise of the type to be eponymous:
Oh, you're doing a Pilate. That's a Pilate too. They're all Pilates!

Except that the inventor was Joseph Pilates. The s is part of the
name. He was born in Germany of a Greek father, whose name was
originally Pilatou or Pilatu (I would assume the former, but
Wikipedia has the latter, and I can't be bothered to dig further for
better info just now), but he changed it to Pilates in Germany. So
the original pronunciation would be [pilatEs] or [pilat at s].

So it's one of those false plurals, like kudos or (for the Canadians
here) Mr. Goudas (a line of canned goods that include Caribbean and
other items that few other brands sell, and at good prices; the
founder's name is Goudas), and it's eponymous, like Bikram Yoga.

Joseph Pilates lived 1880 to 1967. His stuff is a craze now, but it's
been around for a while.

Ciao,
James Harbeck.

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