Originally Posted By: SuperDave456
I've seen old men in gun stores almost get into a fist fight about the pronunciation of "Garand". As in the WWII clip fed Semi-Auto rifle the "M1 Garand".
There was actually a American Rifleman article that quoted a childhood friend of Mr. Garand about how it was properly pronounced.
However I forget.
The famous Julian Hatcher actually knew John Garand first-hand. In his publication "Hatcher's Notebook", on page 382, Hatcher asserts that John Garand himself pronounced his own name to rhyme with "parent", and with the accent on the
first syllable:
GARE-end.
Another controversy surrounds Walter Chrysler's name. Just now I can't find where I have it (I have so very many books), but Chrysler himself pronounced his name
KRIZ-ler, with a short "i". There is a marked tendency for English-speakers to give the letter "y" a long sound by default when it's in the middle of a name, and they did so incessantly with Walter's name, so he just had to get used to the mispronunciation.
And then there's Lee Iacocca. The family always pronounced it
ya-COKE-ah (the "o" is long, like in "cocaine", but the sound is shortened, if that makes any sense). There was even a family member who owned a restaurant called "
Yocco's, a play on the Italian pronunciation. The story I read was the Lee got tired of correcting people who mispronounced the name as
EYE-a-COKE-ah, and began just letting it slide.