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Names you have read on album covers but don’t know how to pronounce

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Martin Barre

First saw his name and heard him on Aqualung.

Assumed his name was pronounced BAR-RAY – is this correct?

He’s a guitar player and I know what a barre chord is but have never had to say the word out loud!

Anybody have any other names you’ve seen/read but don’t exactly know how to pronounce?

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Comments

  6. Bob Mould.

    For years i said “Mold” (to rhyme with cold)
    Then a friend of mine said that the Hüsker Dü mainman’s surname should be pronounced “Moold” (to rhyme with cooled). So that’s what I said for years.
    Then I saw a YouTube interview with Bob, and he confirmed that it’s pronounced MOLD. So it turns out I was right first time.

    • Whereas Robert Moog, whose surname I would have guessed started with the sound a cow makes, is Robert MOE_g, starting with a sound like Moe Tucker.

    • I spent many blissful years labouring under the false assumption that Husker Du was pronounced Husker (to rhyme with busker). Then I saw an MTV interview with Bob Mooold in which he referred to former band Hoooosker Dooo.

  7. What about Carmen Appice?

    I’ve heard it pronounced as ‘app piss’ but based on my limited knowledge of Italian I think it must be ‘appy chay’. No?

    What about Madonna’s surname? I assume it to be ‘chi cone ay’.

    • Really? You’ll know better than me of course, but it was only when I heard his name pronounced ‘Hoo’ rather than ‘Hue’ as I had always assumed that I understood it (as in Boo Hoo).

      • Yep, really.

        Boo is a joke nickname given by his big sister (Boo Hoo), but it doesn’t really work given how their surname is pronounced. Bew Hew would at least rhyme…

        There’s a fantastic promo LP of acoustic performances introduced by perplexed American DJs who come up with all kinds of variations. “And your group’s called The Bible?”

  15. A friend interviewed JD Souther a year or two back. Apparently he was very grumpy about my friend (and presumably everyone in the world for 50 years previously) pronouncing it Sow-ther. Seemingly, to him, it’s ‘Suth-er’. Frankly, if I were him, I’d be grateful for anyone being interested enough to interview him.

  16. Jim Moray. Surname pronounced like Murry.
    David Fiuczynski. Pronounced Fuse-insky.
    Neu!. Pronounced Noy!.
    Terje Rypdal. Pronounced Terr-yay Reep-dahl.
    Eivind Aarset. Pronounced Ay-vind Orsett.

    Salif Keita, Ludovico Einaudi, Värttinä and Pekka Pohjola are a few of those whose names I don’t know how to pronounce properly.

    • Mrs Moose’s union recently changed from being the National Union of Teachers to the National Education Union. Thus, as far as my pronunciation routinely has it, I’m now married to a member of Neu!

      So far she has not taken up motorik drumming. Which is a shame, as I can tell you that she’s certainly got the wrists for it. (hur)

  18. I once worked in a room with someone who listened to a podcast where they talked about a certain Eamon Tull (nephew of Jethro?), and wondered why I hadn’t heard about this (Irish?) artist living in Germany.
    Took me half an hour to work out that they were mispronouncing Amon Düül (“aamonne dylle”).

    • That’s how it’s pronounced by whoever brings them on on the Live in London album. I imagine all the people in the band looking at each other and shrugging… “Who? I thought we were on next” etc

  20. One thing that irks me is Swedes pronouncing The Beatles (Bitäääls) and Monthy Python (Månte Pytån) as if they were Swedish. I understand why, but find it annoying. It probably makes more sense than the who-do-I-think-I-am way I say it, though.

  21. The most recent one for me was The Delines. These days when you ‘discover’ stuff purely online and not after radio airplay you just never heard it said. I could think of at least 3 ways to pronounce it. I saw them live and nobody said it, another album came out and still no clue. This year at a gig they finally said it… Its the Dee Lines.

    I got Devon Sproule wrong for a while too – that’s pronounced as if there’s no U.

  23. As a kid one of my first records was Abba’s Arrival. Those names on the back cover were black magic. Ola Brunkert! Lasse Wellander! Michael “B” Tretow.

    We didn’t have those names in Sunbury

  27. I’m unsure of how to pronounce the first name of harpist Skaila Kanga, who has played on a couple of Roy Harper albums.
    Is it Ska (as in the music) ee-la or more like Scale-Ah or something else altogether?
    I’m assuming the surname is straightforward.

  31. And then there’s this guy

    George Chkiantz

    A recording engineer whose name I recall from several Led Zeppelin albums and I now discover engineered the first Small faces album.

    Any ideas how to pronounce that mouthful?

  34. I’ve always thought that, given his ubiquity, anyone calling the sausage-fingered U2 frontman “Bone-o” was being deliberately obtuse. Similarly, by now, who hasn’t seen footage of David Bowie pronouncing it Bowie as in dough-y.
    I can pronounce recording engineer Victor Van Vugt easily enough, but not without exaggeration and not with a straight face.
    More worrying are groups like Chvrches, Alvvays, Bad Dreems///
    And of course !!! (which I believe is rendered chk-chk-chk. Tossers.

  35. I had an uncle who always talked about stereo records being in ‘steer-eo’. This was particularly weird as he was both a musician and an electrical engineer, mending TVs and record players etc.

    On a similar theme, mono Pye records used to have ‘Monaural’ on the sleeve – is that even a word?

    • steer-eo sounds fine to me and, according to the pronunciation rules that I was taught*, is the correct way. My father pronounced it thus but I go with the crowd.

      *If there are two vowels with a single consonant between them, the first vowel is sounded as you would say it as an individual letter.

      • There would have so many ‘exceptions’ to this rule that it would be meaningless.

        And there are no pronunciations of individual vowel letters, at least not for English, just because they are letters and not sounds.

        Compare: lonely, lovely, lofty. Which one is the “individual letter” sound?

        • Its remarkably useful a lot of the time and is only a rule in the way most English language rules are (The fact that i before e falls over a lot doesn’t stop it being useful). My point is that once you know of such a rule is reasonable to apply it in the absence of any other info. Ultimately if there’s only apparently one correct way, you have to be told what it is and no amount of rules or examples will help.
          The famous example is ghoti, it even had it’s own Wikipedia entry!

  39. Marge, the spread, sounds like the diminutive for Margery.
    Margarine, the spread, has a hard G, like the fat boy in the film of Dahl’s the Witches said it, not like Marjorine, the song by Joe Cocker.
    It is all to do with the e’s.

  40. Not about an artist name but I made a fool of myself at the age of 15 in front of Sharon Webb by referring to the Rush album with the title of “ Two thousand, one hundred and twelve.”

    I know, a 15 year girl liking Rush🎸🎸

  42. I’ve always pronounced the first syllable of John Fogerty’s surname as Fog, as on the Tyne. Turns out he says it Fog to rhyme with vogue. But what does he know?

  46. Try singing these words along to a popular and well known tune:

    “Lon-dubh a’ seinn ann an dubhar na h-oidhche
    tog do sgiathan brist’ is èirigh suas
    fad do rè, bha thu a’ feitheamh airson an tìd’ gu togail rithe.
    Lon-dubh a’ seinn ann an dubhar na h-oidhche,
    tog an sgàil bho d’ shùil is seall gu geur
    fad do rè, bha thu a’ feitheamh airson an tioc a bhios tu saor.
    Lon-dubh sgèith, lon-dubh sgèith,
    Steach dhan t-sòlas dubh na h-oidhche.”

    Here’s a clue –

  47. A big fan of Microdisney and Cathal Couglan. Still can’t pronounce his name. But neither can anyone else it appears. Apart from lyrically referenced on Town to Town, the RTE radio documentary points out that all the members of the band seem to call him something different ranging from Karl to Cah-hol. He appears to have mellowed about it (a bit).

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