"Lehman"

Joel S. Berson Berson at ATT.NET
Mon Sep 15 18:51:29 UTC 2008


At 9/15/2008 02:30 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>>At 9/15/2008 01:56 PM, Mark Mandel wrote:
>>>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>>>
>>>Also generally /'ley.m at n/ in the NYC area. AFAIK the /'liy.m at n/ pron is
>>>restricted to this firm, and presumably (though not certainly) the family
>>>that founded it.
>>
>>How did the outstandingly liberal, German Jewish New York Governor
>>and Senator, Herbert H. Lehman, a member of the banking family and in
>>his pre-political years a member of the firm, pronounce his name?
>I'm pretty sure it was /leym at n/, as in the eponymous college within
>the CUNY system, although come to think of it I've heard that both
>ways.

That's my recollection too.  Perhaps after he left the banking firm
in 1929 he decided he was no longer compelled to Anglicize his name,
as perhaps the founders had done.

Joel

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