A few things

[regshoe]

raremaleslashex works are revealed are this evening! I'm very excited, both to read my own gift (which has some pleasing tags) and to see what's around the collection. Reveals are at 9pm here, and I could stay up for them but I think I won't—I'll let it be a nice thing to look forward to first thing tomorrow.

If any of you are a) able to go to the theatre in the UK and b) fans of Dracula, this may be of interest: the National Theatre of Scotland are producing a new northeast Scottish-set adaptation, starring Danielle Jam (of the Kidnapped ensemble) as Mina and starting its tour of locations in Scotland and England next month. It looks pretty cool, though I don't think I will go—I'm not that into Dracula and it seems like it'll be a bit horror-ish.

I have cleared up a minor mystery: yes, Robert Louis Stevenson did pronounce his middle name like Lewis with an S, not like Louis without an S. I had heard both pronunciations and also knew that he'd changed the spelling from Lewis, and I was puzzled—why change your name to a different spelling of the same name that suggests a different pronunciation but then keep the same pronunciation anyway? But that's exactly what he did, as confirmed in this biography by a cousin, 'due, it is said, to a strong distaste, shared by his father, for a fellow-citizen, who bore the name in the form in which Lewis had received it.' So there you go. The NTS play, and Isobel McArthur in interviews, did pronounce it Louis, I'm not sure whether due to a lack of research (which was certainly not lacking in general) or because that's just the pronunciation that's most often used now. It's not clear why he dropped Balfour, his other middle name; according to the linked biography he 'loathed' his 'third initial', but surely he can't have loathed the name that much or he wouldn't have given it to Davie! Perhaps he just disliked having so many names—as someone also saddled with excessive middle names, I can sympathise with that.

Comments

[ethelmay]

Given the S at the beginning of Stevenson, I don't think I'd necessarily notice if someone said it the other way, unless they put in a dramatic pause or two. And I'm actually not sure whether USians typically say "Louis" with an S at the end or not, because (a) the name is out of fashion, (b) all the older men I know with that name are called Lou, and (c) if they weren't called Lou they'd be called Louie, if you see what I mean! (E.g., my father-in-law's boyhood friend Louie.) I do recall being surprised to find out that my internet acquaintance Dr. Margot Louis pronounced her last name Lewis.

[sovay]

Given the S at the beginning of Stevenson, I don't think I'd necessarily notice if someone said it the other way, unless they put in a dramatic pause or two.

I think it would be audible; the vowels are slightly different between the two versions of the name. That said, I am also not convinced the transatlantic distinction is total, because I've heard "Louis" pronounced like "Lewis" and like "Louie" (and also like French, but I assume that's not what we're talking about here). It's always felt to me like one of those things that idiosyncratically slides around, like whether "Leah" rhymes with "Lia" or "Leia."

[regshoe]

Huh, and I don't think I've ever heard Leah pronounced other than like Lia! So many interesting name pronunciations to learn. :D

[sovay]

and I don't think I've ever heard Leah pronounced other than like Lia!

It's the usual pronunciation in Hebrew and Yiddish.

[regshoe]

Surely treating Louie as a distinct nickname/spelling it differently suggests they do pronounce the S in Louis?

IME from listening to people talking about RLS and going 'hold on, how are they pronouncing his name there??', the pronunciations are distinguishable although pretty similar.

[ethelmay]

But I only know how it was spelled from my FIL's photo album. If I had only heard him spoken of I wouldn't know if he was being called Louie or Louis. Anyway, if I as a USian don't know which pronunciation to default to (even for RLS I had to stop and think which one I say), it's either not universal or never was. I can certainly envision a French-Canadian kid in the US being called Louis at home and thinking of it as Louis, and an Anglicized pronunciation (but no final S) at school and everyone there thinking of it as Louie. Similar to my half-Greek friend Melanie, whose mother called her Meli, meaning honey, but who was also sometimes called Melly as a nickname.

[regshoe]

Ah, yes, that makes sense!