At 3:42 PM -0400 10/24/09, John Betmanis wrote:
>Also, I'll bet that most people in the English speaking world
>(except maybe those specifically into classic French bicycles) would
>pronounce it the English way.
With a name that is so easily pronounced in English as Alex Singer,
it makes sense to use the English pronunciation when speaking among
English-speakers. Now Rene Herse or Cinelli are different cases - you
can't really make them English-sounding.
>Just guessing here, but Jan probably no longer pronounces his own
>name the way his parents pronounced it. Usually it's a lot simpler
>to adapt than to change the world around you.
I still pronounce my name the way I heard it for the first 20 years of my life, before coming to the U.S. I think if wanted to Americanize it, I'd have to change it altogether. Especially my last name has a long history, and my grandfather got into trouble in the 1930s for it. (Heinrich Heine was a famous German Jewish poet, after whom a street is named in Paris - where he lived during an earlier period of pogroms in Germany. Anybody with that last name was suspect to the Nazis...)
My children have names that can be pronounced in many languages - like Alex Singer's. It might make their lives easier in the future. It probably helped Alex Singer when he moved to France.
Jan Heine
Editor
Bicycle Quarterly
2116 Western Ave.
Seattle WA 98121
http://www.vintagebicyclepress.com