Boehner

[W Brewer]

Second test of Unicode IPA symbols in ADS-L. (Poster message will show
gibberish.)

Awright, LH, now that Boehner is once again Speaker of the House (thus
retroactively unstaining my escutcheon), let us once more run the onomastic
gauntlet: How likely is it for ö/oe to be pronounced as [ei] rather than
[ou] in the Americanization of German surnames?

(a) ö/oe > [ei]: Boehner:

(1) John Andrew Boehner ['beinɚ]. Wikipedia note: "Boehner's biography at
House.gov recommends the pronunciation BAY-ner." Thus far, it appears that
the rendering of ö/oe > [ei] in Boehner is an hapax. He doesn't want to be
called ['bounɚ] (as WB insists), but is too proud to change the spelling.

(1¼) Lou Gehrig ['gɛɹɪɡ] < Goehrig.

(1½) Goethe ['gɚtə].

(1¾) E.F.K. (Konrad) Koerner ['kʰɚnɚ].

(b) *ö*/*oe* > [ou]: Boeing, Boehm, Roebling, Loew, Gobel, Hollerith:

(1) William Boeing ['bouwiŋ] < Wilhelm Böing.

(2) Ken Boehm [boum] (NLRC chairman), CNN news reader 29 Dec 2012].

(3) John Augustus Roebling ['ɹoubliŋ] (né Johann August Röbling, engineer).

(4) Marcus Loew [lou] < Löwe (cf. the MGM lion).

(5) "Lonesome George" Gobel ['goubɫ] (né George Leslie Goebel).
(6) Herman Hollerith < Hoellerith.

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