I'm reading Russia, by Donald Mackenzie Wallace, an indispensable text for any English-speaker who wishes to understand the country in tsarist times (there were three editions, in 1877, 1905, and 1912; I'm reading an abridgment of the last, but the 1905 is online here and here); I wish to present here an amusing anecdote from near the start of Chapter IV:
According to this custom, when a boy enters the seminary he receives from the Bishop a new family name. The name may be Bogoslafski, from a word signifying "Theology," or Bogolubof, "the love of God," or some similar term; or it may be derived from the name of the boy’s native village, or from any other word which the Bishop thinks fit to choose. I know of one instance where a Bishop chose two French words for the purpose. He had intended to call the boy Velikoselski, after his native place, Velikoe Seló, which means "big village"; but finding that there was already a Velikoselski in the seminary, and being in a facetious frame of mind, he called the new comer Grandvillageski—a word that may perhaps sorely puzzle some philologist of the future.Aside from the story, I had not realized priests were given new family names, and I thought it was interesting enough to pass along. Posted by languagehat at September 28, 2004 10:10 PM
This is completely unrelated, but...
I've always wondered about the spelling and pronunciation of "Nietzsche". Not just the final "e" being constantly pronounced as [i] (it should be a schwa, right?), but...there seem to be too many consonants.
If it's supposed to be pronounced "Neets-shuh", then isn't the "t" unnecessary, since the "z" already sounds like "ts"? And if it's just "Neet-shuh", then isn't the "z" completely useless?
How do you pronounce "Nietzsche", anyway? I assume it's not the way people in America pronounce it. ("Nee-chee")
Where did the name come from?
Posted by: Xhenxhefil at September 29, 2004 03:01 PMI had thought it was Slavic in origin, but according to this forum posting it's a regional German name:
The surname "Nietzsche" is an East-Middle German (Thuringia, [Upper] Saxony, Silesia) derivation of the first name "Nikolaus". The letter order "tz-sch" doesn't appear in High German, but is characteristic for some person and place names here.
As for pronunciation, I say "NEET-shuh," but I'd love to hear from a German speaker; spelling, even in German, is not necessarily logical and minimalist.
Posted by: language hat at September 29, 2004 03:54 PMThe author of my Russian Etymological Dictionary (1910-1914) has the arresting name Preobrazhensky = Transfiguration, and I once saw a tv interview with one Tsvetok, a distant relative of El Poldo de la Flora, no doubt.
Posted by: PF at December 14, 2004 02:34 AMI heard it pronounced as Nee-shay in that movie, "Anywhere but Here". How's that?
Posted by: deedee at February 9, 2005 09:28 AMIt's pronounced "knee-cha." That's from a Philosophy professor with a doctorate. I've seen it pronounced various ways myself in movies as well. I think the most popular mispronunciation though is "Knee-chee".
Posted by: J at June 8, 2005 10:35 PMIts Ni like knee and tzsche like Che Guevara
Posted by: Andreas Brandstetter at September 26, 2005 01:23 PMNo, it's a German name. Final E in German is a schwa. It's NEE-ch' -- or NEE-chuh as others suggest. There are a few provincial dialects in which the final E is pronounced like English EE. My high school German teacher was from one of those places so perhaps yours was too. But in standard German it's a schwa.
NEE-chee is merely non-standard and would be frowned on if uttered by a foreigner outside the localities where it occurs. But NEE-shay and NEE-chay are just plain wrong, made up by some pompous ignoramus. Like the utterly incorrect French J that is suddenly in vogue in American newscasters' pronunciation of Azerbaijan and Beijing.
Posted by: Gene Fellner at October 28, 2005 10:23 PM