I just saw Linda Winer interview Rosemary Harris, who knew Laurence Olivier and insisted that he pronounced his name in the traditional anglicized fashion (“oh-LIHV-ee-er,” with the ending as in “heavier”) and disliked the “oh-LIHV-ee-ay” pronunciation that has become universal (“It’s not French!”), though he learned to accept it. (The same is true of the jazz drummer Paul Motian, who used to insist on pronouncing his Armenian name “MOW-tee-an” but finally gave in to the ubiquitous “MOW-shun.”) Since I can’t find any mention of this on the internet, and all my reference books give the French-style version, I thought I’d better post it here so there will be some record of the fact.
I know of a CEO of an American company who doesn’t let anyone forget he is Italian (“buon giorno a tutti!”) but his team all pronounce the gli in his name with a hard /g/, though a more Italian pronunciation should – I imagine – roll easier off even an anglo-monoglot tongue. Makes me scratch my head.
Aungier St. = /ˈe:nʤəɹ/
D’Olier St. = /dəˈliəɹ/ (alternatively second vowel can be long , i.e., i:, and the pronunciation with short vowel can have 1st syllable stress)
https://www.jjon.org/joyce-s-words/joyces-pronunciations/pronunciations
See Pronouncing Joyce.
What – did the au get interpreted as an Irish ao somehow?
Well, there’s Middle English daunger “danger”, and straunge; to say nothing of gauge.
https://interestingliterature.com/2019/03/the-general-prologue-the-very-beginning-of-chaucers-canterbury-tales/
Ah, yes, that makes a lot more sense.
“oh-LIHV-ee-ay” pronunciation that has become universal
Has it? Universal where? I think I’ve never heard that pronunciation.
Olivier rhymes with theatre.
Universal where? I think I’ve never heard that pronunciation.
In the US, certainly; I’ve never heard any other.
A withering look from Maggie Smith would soon put a stop to that sort of nonsense, surely!
Do you mean Olivier has merged into Oliver?
I’m stretching to make the point: I mean the final syllable rhymes.
Olivier has 4 syllables for me.
I’ve listened to 30-some UK examples of “Olivier” on YouGlish (most of which refer to Laurence or to the award or theater named after him), and all use the “ee-ay” pronunciation.
Yeah, I only ever hear the “ee-ay” pronunciation, so I was delighted to have AntC confirm the existence of the one I posted about.
Yes, it is surprising if AntC has never heard the “ay” pronunciation. And [citation needed] for Maggie Smith: consider this clip where the interviewer asks her “Tell me about Larry Oliv-ee-ay”. What withering look?
I looked around for other sources, but Olivier doesn’t seem to have ever shared this gripe with anybody besides Rosemary Harris. He wrote an autobiography, there are multiple biographies, his sister wrote a biography (unpublished, but available to other biographers), and none of them say anything about his name being pronounced differently when he was growing up than when he was famous, or about his having any objections to it. I wonder, was there some leg-pulling going on? Sir Laurence was known as a raconteur and not above a little enhancement of the truth for the sake of a story. It *is*, of course, originally a French name, as he well knew, since his father took an interest in his Huguenot ancestors and gave all three children names with French spellings.
So I’m seeing an awful lot of absences exactly where you’d expect evidence, against one memory at a distance of several decades. There’s also some positive evidence: Joan Fontaine (his co-star in Rebecca) uses the “ay” pronunciation (at about 1:39); you can also find Richard Burton and Brian Cox, who also worked with him, saying it likewise. Now, any of these sources could be doubted; maybe all the actors sharing memories in “Old Vic Voices – working with Laurence Olivier” were too polite to object to “Oliv-ee-ay” (one uses it himself, though most just say “Larry”), or maybe nobody except Harris ever knew him well enough. But for an extremely famous and recent celebrity, with a very large number of sources, I don’t think it’s stupid or irrational to go with the large majority.
It’s not a question of what to “go with”; obviously everybody has called him “o-liv-ee-ay” for many years and it would be obnoxious pedantry to insist on the other. My point was simply that he originally used “o-liv-ee-er,” and I thought that was interesting.
“𝐼 𝑗𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑠𝑎𝑤 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑎 𝑊𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑟 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑖𝑒𝑤 𝑅𝑜𝑠𝑒𝑚𝑎𝑟𝑦 𝐻𝑎𝑟𝑟𝑖𝑠, 𝑤ℎ𝑜 𝑘𝑛𝑒𝑤 𝐿𝑎𝑢𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑂𝑙𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑒𝑟 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑖𝑛𝑠𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑑 ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑛𝑎𝑚𝑒 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑑𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑧𝑒𝑑 𝑓𝑎𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑜𝑛 (“𝑜ℎ-𝐿𝐼𝐻𝑉-𝑒𝑒-𝑒𝑟,” 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑠 𝑖𝑛 “ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑣𝑖𝑒𝑟”) 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 “𝑜ℎ-𝐿𝐼𝐻𝑉-𝑒𝑒-𝑎𝑦” 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑢𝑛𝑐𝑖𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 ℎ𝑎𝑠 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑢𝑛𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑎𝑙 (“𝐼𝑡’𝑠 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝐹𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑐ℎ!”)…”
I watched the interview and Ms. Harris never stated that Laurence Olivier pronounced his name in the anglicized fashion. What she said was that Olivier hated being called by the oh-LIHV-vee-ay pronunciation, ( I will get to that later). She said she remembered that his name was always pronounced Oh-LIHV-ee-a; a pronunciation of which I’ve never heard, but not in the anglicized style as in “heavier”, which is pronounced with the rhotic R ending.
There is no documented evidence or rumor that Olivier disliked the “oh-LIHV-ee-ay” pronunciation, or that the original pronunciation was pronounced in the anglicized fashion. Why would he? The name’s provenance is French? Furthermore, why would he alter the pronunciation of his name based on people’s misunderstanding or mispronunciation of how (according to Languagehat) it was originally and correctly pronounced.
Also, Bonita Granville, an actress whose movie debut was in a film with Olivier, recalled that he took a shine to her because she was the only one who pronounced his name correctly. She pronounced it Oh-LIHV-ee-ay. Therefore we have two contrasting narratives. Whom do we believe? Well, common sense is anathema to academia, because anyone with a scintilla of common sense would have to agree that Laurence always pronounced his name Oh-LIHV-ee-ay. There is absolutely no documentation or corroboration from any respectable source that his name was pronounced in the anglicized version. Hearsay information is never reliable.
“𝑀𝑦 𝑝𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑠𝑖𝑚𝑝𝑙𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 ℎ𝑒 𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑢𝑠𝑒𝑑 “𝑜-𝑙𝑖𝑣-𝑒𝑒-𝑒𝑟,” 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐼 𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔.”
You’re presenting your declaration as if it were axiomatic. Again, there is absolutely no documentation, or any kind of evidence that Olivier used the anglicized version, because he never did.
Regarding Harris’s claim that Olivier disliked the “oh-LIHV-ee-ay” pronunciation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uiAkt8CcjE&t=51s
The YouTube video validates that the actor pronounced it as it’s universally pronounced, “oh-LIHV-ee-ay”. If indeed Lawrence hated people calling him oh-LIHV-ee-ay then why would he acquiesce by pronouncing it in the manner that he admonished. I don’t think so. Therefore, Ms. Harris’s story is skeptical and seemingly counterfactual.
I’m not sure why you’re being so aggressive about it; you could have presented your point (which adds little to what has already been said) in a single paragraph without all the frothing. At any rate, no one denied that the “oh-LIHV-ee-ay” pronunciation has become universal (it’s right there in the post), and it’s not in the least surprising that Olivier himself adopted it (as Motian adopted the popular version of his name). As for your fulmination about “hearsay information,” allow me to gently point out that your comment is exactly that.
She said she remembered that his name was always pronounced Oh-LIHV-ee-a; a pronunciation of which I’ve never heard, but not in the anglicized style as in “heavier”, which is pronounced with the rhotic R ending.
You don’t seem to grasp that the rhotic r is irrelevant: of course he, being a non-rhotic speaker, would not use [r], but if “his name was always pronounced Oh-LIHV-ee-a,” that does in fact have the same ending as “heavier.” That’s how English works. In any event, I always welcome revivals of old posts, so I thank you for that, if not for your uncalled-for belligerence.
“heavier”, which is pronounced with the rhotic R ending.
For English speakers with a rhotic accent (Western half of UK), yes it has an R ending. For those without a rhotic accent (like myself born in London or Olivier himself born in Surrey), it doesn’t. Never the less, a non-rhotic (schwa) ending in English is not the same as a French -ay ending, not even in ghastly schoolboy Anglicised French.
why would he acquiesce by pronouncing it in the manner that he admonished.
Because, as an actor, he’s a master of accents. And in public appearances even off-stage, he’s still playing a part/conforming to a public expectation. I take it from your name, you’re French. Then you must have noticed people with strong regional accents softening them when they come up to Paris? (And vice-versa, Parisians putting on a regional accent when they holiday in the South.)
Acquiescing to the common (mis)pronunciation of one’s name is hardly uncommon, as Albert Einstein, Henry Kissinger, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Newt Gingrich, and Dick Cheney might testify.
Youtube has the relevant snippet from the interview.
The Frenchiest pronunciation would be /əlɪviˈeɪ/ as opposed to the usual /əˈlɪvieɪ/. I presume Harris is saying the man himself preferred /əˈlɪviə/ although what she says in the interview is /əlɪviˈə/. It’s hard when you are contrasting the vowels in unstressed syllables. There are many English words where Americans stress the final syllable and Brits don’t (Wikipedia list) but I don’t believe Olivier is one of those. If the occasional American did call him /əlɪviˈeɪ/ I imagine Larry would have got cross.
Time magazine wrote “Laurence Olivier (pronounced O’liv’vy yay)” in 1946. His Wikipedia article Talk page has someone claiming it was his father who adopted the French pronunciation. One might see how his uncle Sydney Olivier was and/or is pronounced. It is conceivable that Laurence regretted his father’s change but never tried to undo it.
Have you actually encountered that? In my limited experience, there’s one Standard French accent per person.
Have you actually encountered that?
Yes, on holiday in (say) the Dordogne. Parisians shifting accent to speak to the Patron vs amongst themselves. The Patron softening his accent for Parisians vs to his wife/staff.
Also at markets, stallholders speaking to holidaymakers vs locals.
(Not that I really grok what you mean by “Standard French accent”. Aren’t impenetrable-to-Parisians accents the staple of all those bucolic French movies? Jean de Florette, Le Chatea de ma Mere, etc, etc There’s a Sacha Distel song involving Petanque.)
I mean “accents used to pronounce Standard French”. I have two colleagues from Burgundy who can speak in two different accents – but one is for Standard French, the other is for their actual local dialect (which is on the Arpitan side of things for one of them), so it’s tied to a different vocabulary and grammar.
I mean “accents used to pronounce Standard French”.
What are you saying here ? Only a Standard French accent produces Standard French – if there is such a thing as “a Standard French accent”.
Or are you saying that there are as many “Standard French accents” as there are French accents (in your example the colleagues would speak Burgundian Standard French) ? In that case the “standard” part of “Standard French accent” doesn’t make much sense.
Sounds as if you are talking about what might be called “regionally standard French accents”. Or just “regional French accents”.
What does the word “standard” contribute to understanding the accent situation in France ? Given that [different] “accents [are] used to pronounce Standard French”, as you put it.
@stu
I thought DM meant Standard French lexicon + avoiding extreme accent features that could affect intelligibility (all I can think of there is non-standard nasalisation, ch instead of soft c, and ou instead of long o, maybe also some super phlegmy r or a sounds).
I meant that the same person has two native sound systems and uses one for their dialect and one for the standard form of the language, so that sound system, grammar and lexicon come as a single indivisible package.
That’s not how it works in English; and that fact is quite unusual in a European context. (Not in a Chinese one, AFAIK.)
The feature of French I most notice as you go south is retaining the schwa at the end of words. (Where the spelling has an ‘e’, but standard pronunciation swallows it.) “Retaining?” Well not only: often adding a schwa even when there’s not one in the spelling — vingt-e.
France population ~70m, Guangdong (for example) ~126m, so I don’t think you’re comparing eggs with eggs taking the whole of China. Roughly ~46m speakers of Southern Min [wp] would be a better comparison — which are broadly mutually comprehensible.
Yes, Putonghua/Mandarin, is a different language — as we’d say anywhere outside of the hearing of Xi Jinping — but switching between Hoklo/Putonghua is not comparable to what I hear in France. Historically (Napoleon complained about it) I guess regional French involved a markedly different lexicon; not these days. And that _is_ how it works in English. (I used ‘clarty’ the other day, got blank looks.)
“𝐼’𝑚 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑠𝑢𝑟𝑒 𝑤ℎ𝑦 𝑦𝑜𝑢’𝑟𝑒 𝑏𝑒𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑠𝑜 𝑎𝑔𝑔𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑖𝑡; 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑝𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑡… 𝑖𝑛 𝑎 𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑙𝑒 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑎𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑝ℎ”
Was I being aggressive because I refuted your statements? I don’t understand.
Regardless, it seems that you cherry-picked my entire post. You presented a declarative sentence: ““𝑀𝑦 𝑝𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑠𝑖𝑚𝑝𝑙𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 ℎ𝑒 𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑢𝑠𝑒𝑑 “𝑜-𝑙𝑖𝑣-𝑒𝑒-𝑒𝑟,..” without anything factual–excluding hearsay–to support your statement. As I said in my previous comment: “Again, there is absolutely no documentation, or any kind of evidence that Olivier used the anglicized version, because he never did.”
I apologize if that tone seems too aggressive, but how can I lessen the tone without also lessening the emphasis.
“𝐴𝑠 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑓𝑢𝑙𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 “ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑠𝑎𝑦 𝑖𝑛𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑚𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛,” 𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑜𝑤 𝑚𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑔𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑙𝑦 𝑝𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑡 𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑖𝑠 𝑒𝑥𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑙𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡.”
Fulmination: “The act of fulminating or exploding; detonation.” Isn’t that a bit hyperbolic; My reference to hearsay was only; “Hearsay information is never reliable.” I wasn’t fulminating.
Regardless, how can my information be “hearsay” when I provided you with a video where Mr. Olivier pronounces his name, Oh-LIHV-ee-ay. Nevertheless, you said that he learned to accept that pronunciation, which is different from succumbing to the Oh-LIHV-ee-ay pronunciation by pronouncing it that way. Rosemary Harris emphatically affirmed that Lawrence declared that it was not a French name. That is quite a discrepancy and difficult to believe; his surname came from a great-great-grandfather who was of French Huguenot origin. She also maintained that Lawrence “hated” being called Oh-LIHV-ee-ay, but he hated it so much that he decided to go by that pronunciation. Does that really make sense? Keep in mind, Rosemary Harris was twenty years younger than Olivier. Nevertheless, she remembers “years and years earlier” he was always Lawrence Oh-LIHV-ee-a. Many years earlier in 1930 when Lawrence was in Noel Coward’s West End production of “Private Lives” he went by the surname Oh-LIHV-ee-ay. Ms. Harris was only three-years old; notwithstanding, she claims years and years earlier he was always Oh-LIHV-ee-a. Her story seems a little too incongruous.
“𝑌𝑜𝑢 𝑑𝑜𝑛’𝑡 𝑠𝑒𝑒𝑚 𝑡𝑜 𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑠𝑝 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑟ℎ𝑜𝑡𝑖𝑐 𝑟 𝑖𝑠 𝑖𝑟𝑟𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑣𝑎𝑛𝑡…”
It depends how it would be pronounced in certain parts of the UK and the US. However, I concede; it’s irrelevant.
“𝐵𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑒, 𝑎𝑠 𝑎𝑛 𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑜𝑟, ℎ𝑒’𝑠 𝑎 𝑚𝑎𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑎𝑐𝑐𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑠. 𝐴𝑛𝑑 𝑖𝑛 𝑝𝑢𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑐 𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑠 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑛 𝑜𝑓𝑓-𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑔𝑒, ℎ𝑒’𝑠 𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑦𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡/𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑎 𝑝𝑢𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑐 𝑒𝑥𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛.”
That’s purely conjectural.
This entire thread on Olivier is based on hypothetical arguments. However, I never presented my arguments as facts; whereas, Languagehat did when he stated that Olivier originally used O-liv-ee-er. That is a statement of fact, of which he has absolutely no proof or evidence beyond hearsay. My evidence is circumstantial, but in a court of law it certainly has more credence. Common sense should have easily settled this dispute, without the help of academia.
his surname came from a great-great-grandfather who was of French Huguenot origin.
I think too many generations ago to be relevant (since you’re getting all legalistic about it). Stephen /ˈkoʊlbərt/ KOHL-bərt ; Stephen /koʊlˈbɛər/ kohl-BAIR, changed within a lifetime.
This entire thread on Olivier is based on hypothetical arguments.
The Hattery is not a court of law, nor a place to publish papers with academic rigour (those are welcome, but not prescribed). You seem to be suffering over-much from Someone-is-wrong-on-the-internet-ism.