the onomasticon

for all the saucy pedantic wretches out there, here are the correct pronunciations of your favourite authors’ names. many of these have sent my brain into convulsions. i can’t wait for all the gratitude that i will receive from my friends and colleagues when i start pointing out their errors. you are welcome in advance.

part the first, agee to hawthorne

• Agee, James—rhymes with cagey
• Alcott, Bronson and Louisa May—ALL CUT, not Al cot
• Beerbohm, Max—BEERBOME
• Berkeley, Bishop—BARKLY
• Brontë, Charlotte and Emily—BRONTY, like Monty, not Brontay
• Cather, Willa—rhymes with gather; it is not said as in Catherine
• Coleridge, Samuel Taylor—COAL-RIDGE (2 syllables, not 3)
• Dodgson, Charles (Lewis Carroll)—in this case DODSON, a rare family pronunciation with silent g
• Dos Passos, John—DUSS PASSUS, rhyming with Parnassus
• Du Bois, W. E. B.—in this case dew-BOYCE, like choice
• Hammett, Dashiell—duh-SHEEL, like reveal
• Hazlitt, William—HAZE-LIT, not HAS-LIT.
• Hawthorne, Nathaniel—nuth-ANN-yul, as in nothing and Daniel.

the second part can be found here.

source: ralph h. emerson, english language notes 34.2 (1996)