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A word ending with e usually doesn't have a vowel at the end like bike and strike, so why is Nike different?

yoozer8
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shinzou
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7 Answers7

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Because Nike was the Greek goddess of victory (see Wikipedia) and final 'e's are not silent in Greek. Similarly, the final 'e' should be pronounced in the name Irene, as it is in other Greek-derived names like Chloe, Zoe and Phoebe.

David Richerby
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Kate Bunting
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    Note that this doesn't explain the first vowel sound in Nike, /aɪˡ/ (I think, my IPA is very limited) which in Greek (well, modern Greek, @JanusBahsJacquet might know if this would also be applicable to Ancient) is a short /i/ similar to the i in Mickey. So, in Greek the word is pronounced /niki/. I've always wondered where the /aɪˡ/ came from. – terdon Nov 22 '17 at 10:56
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    @terdon Modern Greek no longer has length distinctions at all, but Ancient Greek did—and Νῑ́κη had a long vowel in the first syllable. I don’t think the match between long vowels in Greek and the results (often diphthongs) of long vowels in English match up particularly well in general, but they do in this case. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Nov 22 '17 at 11:01
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    @terdon I’ve heard it claimed that the “official” pronunciation of the brand was originally indeed approximating the original, Greek one — i.e. /niki/. It eroded because that’s simply not how any American English speaker would ever pronounce it, and the common pronunciation stuck. (And, from my limited knowledge of Ancient Greek — one year in high school — I don’t think Janus is right about the pronunciation matching up.) – Konrad Rudolph Nov 22 '17 at 11:03
  • @JanusBahsJacquet huh, OK. I know the η was long in Ancient Greek, but I thought that just meant a more protracted i sound not an /aɪˡ/. It's the entry of the initial a I find strange (I am referring to the aye sound, excuse my IPA). Are you saying that Ancient Greek pronunciation was likely closer to aye? – terdon Nov 22 '17 at 11:03
  • @KonradRudolph that would make perfect sense if it were pronounced to rhyme with hike. It's odd that they insisted on keeping one oddity and not the other. That said, ironically enough, in Greek we actually say nike to rhyme with hike when referring to the brand. – terdon Nov 22 '17 at 11:05
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    @terdon Well as the answer and first comment show there’s some precedence for pronouncing the terminal “e”. – Konrad Rudolph Nov 22 '17 at 11:06
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    Funny trivia: In Greek we usually pronounce Nike (the American sports brand, not the goddess) as naik, not naikee :) – Thanassis Nov 22 '17 at 11:07
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    "the final 'e' should be pronounced in the name Irene" Please rephrase that -- it really isn't cool to tell people that they're mispronouncing their own name. Indeed, pretty much by definition, they pronounce their name correctly. The English-language name Irene is essentially always pronounced "EYE-reen", and the Greek equivalent name is usually transliterated "Irini" (i-REEN-ee, "i" as in "bit"). – David Richerby Nov 22 '17 at 11:08
  • @KonradRudolph argh, sorry, I should have said "rhyme with Nicky". So keeping both non-default-English vowels. – terdon Nov 22 '17 at 11:09
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    @terdon The pronunciation of the first vowel of "Nike" might have been anglicized to resemble bike, hike, like, etc. – David Richerby Nov 22 '17 at 11:12
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    @terdon Ancient Greek η was indeed long, but it was a long [εː] (as in bet, but long). Iota could be either long or short, representing short [i] (as in happy) or long [iː] (as in me). The reason Nike has a diphthong is that long [iː] was diphthongised into [əɪ] and then [aɪ] as part of the Great Vowel Shift—but this happened in English, after the words were borrowed. Later borrowings just adapted to the already existing ones. So English Nike was probably pronounced [ˈniːkε] or [ˈniːkɪ] up until the 1500s. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Nov 22 '17 at 11:14
  • Ha, @JanusBahsJacquet , as I understand, Zoe, Chloe and Phoebe also ended in ε. Other names get Americanized too. Like Noe Valley in San Francisco, which is pronounced no-ee, rhyming with Zoe, but the name comes from the Spanish setter family Noe, from back when California was a part of Mexico. You can still see the grave of a family member in the San Francisco Mission. And in Spanish, there is no ambiguity about the final E. It is not silent and must be pronounced like the E in ‘bet’. – Logophile Nov 22 '17 at 11:51
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    Traditionally, Chloë and Zoë are written with a dieresis to indicate the pronunciation, although modern style usually omits these. – KSmarts Nov 22 '17 at 14:35
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    @KSmarts: ...because people can't find the dieresis on their keyboards. ;-) – DevSolar Nov 22 '17 at 14:56
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    @DavidRicherby: "Indeed, pretty much by definition, they pronounce their name correctly." To some extent, that could be the answer to this question, too. Nike is pronounced how it is because that's how the founders of the company pronounced it. – PersonX Nov 22 '17 at 14:58
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    @KSmarts Similarly with zoölogy, coöperation, reëlection, ëţč. (Oops, I got a bit carried away.) – David Richerby Nov 22 '17 at 15:21
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    @David Obligatory link: The Curse of the Diaeresis. – Alex Shpilkin Nov 22 '17 at 20:34
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    Janus Bahs Jacquet has it right, but it doesn't seem to have sunk in with the other commenters, and this type of error seems to be ubiquitous on this site. The pronunciation [naɪki] for the name of the goddess is not an Anglicization, Americanization or mishearing of Greek, modern or ancient, but the result of taking the Greek pronunciation at a certain point in time and passing it along with sound changes that occurred in English. For some reason, commenters on this site have produced endless bad answers to questions about traditional English pronunciations of Latin and Greek under the ... – Robert Furber Nov 22 '17 at 20:41
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    ... mistaken assumption that these are "mispronunciations", rather than trying to understand the phonological history of English and other languages. – Robert Furber Nov 22 '17 at 20:43
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    @DavidRicherby "The English-language name Irene is essentially always pronounced "EYE-reen"". Please rephrase that. Some Irenes pronounced their names that way. Some pronounced theirs "ai'ri:ni". – Rosie F Nov 22 '17 at 20:51
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    @Thanassis We do pronounce it as naik in Persian, as well. :D – Omid Reza Abbasi Nov 22 '17 at 22:19
  • @DavidRicherby I found one single ö in Project Gutenberg's complete works of Edgar Allan Poe: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2147/2147-0.txt The word "naive" occurs without diaeresis. – Kaz Nov 24 '17 at 01:51
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    @RosieF Like I said in a (now-deleted?) comment, I have never met or heard of a single Irene who used a trisyllabic pronunciation, apart from the English actress whom Kate pointed to as a counter-example (and whom I’d never heard of before). I don’t think it’s unfair to say that the English name Irene is essentially always (meaning ‘nearly always’) pronounced disyllabically. It definitely seems misrepresentative of things to say that “some say /aɪˈriːn/, some say /aɪˈriːni/”—that makes it sounds like a 50/50 thing, which I would be very surprised if it were. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Nov 24 '17 at 17:43
  • I don't have a scientific sample, but from knowing some Irenes in real life and characters on TV I've never heard anyone pronounce it Irenee, bit it maybe a regional thing as well – Maxim Nov 24 '17 at 23:58
  • @Maxim I only know of one example in media of it being pronounced "eye-ree-nee" and that's the 1991 animated film "The Princess and the Goblin". I've only seen the film once, but remember the pronunciation clearly as I found it such a shocking departure from the way I'd always imagined the name while reading the book the film was based upon (and, indeed, all other encounters I'd had with the name). – jmbpiano Nov 25 '17 at 03:18
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    An additional data point: I knew a trisyllabic Irene, born in 1918 in the NW of England. – Rosie F Nov 25 '17 at 08:31
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    @JanusBahsJacquet, I did not refer to an actress but to the character in 'The Forsyte Saga'. In both the 1967 and 2002 dramatisations her name was pronounced with three syllables, as it would have been at the time the story was set (1880s - 1920s). We had a family friend of that name, born around 1910. Oh, and Penelope is another Greek name which always has the final 'e' sounded. – Kate Bunting Nov 25 '17 at 09:30
  • @KateBunting In an also now-deleted comment, you referred to Irene Handl; that’s the one I was talking about. At any rate, David is right that it is not correct to claim that Irene “should” be pronounced trisyllabically, any more than it is correct to claim that Kate should have two syllables. It may be pronounced that way, but most commonly it isn’t. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Nov 25 '17 at 09:34
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    Not I - it must have been another Kate (though I did once see Irene Handl on the stage). Put it another way; when the name was introduced to England in the 19th century it was trisyllabic like the Greek word, and E.G. Withycombe writing in the 1940s regarded the disyllabic pronunciation as an American version which was then creeping into use in the UK. – Kate Bunting Nov 25 '17 at 17:04
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    The great songwriter Huddie Ledbetter went to prison for killing a man who told him "Irene" had three syllables. Personally I'd let that one slide. – Ed Plunkett Nov 27 '17 at 20:06
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English spelling does not have a one-to-one relationship with English pronunciation, so it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that "Nike" does not rhyme with "bike" and "strike" (except for when it does—apparently, there are some speakers who don't use the "official", disyllabic pronunciation for the brand).

"Nike" is from a Greek word-form, unlike "bike" and "strike"

To answer the question about why: "bike" and "strike" are spelled with the "silent e" that in present-day English is used to indicate a "long vowel" pronunciation. ("Bike" is an oddly formed shortening of "bicycle", coined fairly recently; "strike" comes from an Old English verb that had long /iː/.)

The "e" in Nike serves a different function: as Kate Bunting mentioned, this word is derived from Greek νίκη/Νίκη, meaning "victory/Victory (capitalized when used to refer to the goddess personifying the idea of victory)". The letter "e" in English "Nike" is a transliteration of the Greek letter η (eta).

The "traditional" English pronunciation of Latin and Greek

The Great Vowel Shift established a "traditional English pronunciation of Latin" (also used for Greek words) that continued to be used as a system for some time

There exists a tradition of pronouncing Latin words in English with certain characteristically English vowel qualities, and a tradition of pronouncing Greek words as if they were Latin words. Janus Bahs Jacquet referenced the Great Vowel Shift in a comment; this tradition did originate from this sound change, but my understanding is that not all words pronounced according to this tradition were actually taken into English before the Great Vowel Shift (which according to Wikipedia is thought to have occured approximately between 1400 and 1600).

It became an established convention for pronouncing all Latin and Greek words used in English, including words that were borrowed at some point after the Great Vowel Shift (although alternative systems have also existed alongside this system for a long time).

In the traditional English pronunciation of Latin, word-final "-e" is pronounced like the "-y" in "happy"

Word-final "e" in the traditional English pronunciation of Latin and Greek is typically pronounced with the same vowel as the word "happy"; sometimes represented in the IPA as /i/. I'm not totally sure of the history of this pronunciation (in traditional British "Received Pronunciation", this is not quite the same vowel as "long e"; it's instead considered to be the same vowel as "short i"). But it applies to Greek names ending in "e" like Nike, Calliope etc. the same as it applies to Latin words like simile, sine or carpe.

(There actually has been a tendency for word-final "e" to be reinterpreted as "silent e" in a number of words or phrases from Latin, such as "vice versa", "bona fide" and "rationale". However, as far as I know, this kind of reinterpretation has not yet come to be considered standard for the name "Nike".)

Alternative pronunciations exist for some words from Latin and Greek, but not for Nike as far as I know

The "traditional English pronunciation of Latin" (and Greek) is also why the i in "Nike" is pronounced as an English "long i" (IPA /aɪ/). The i's in via and viva are sometimes pronounced the same way. A competing "restored" or Continental-European-style pronunciation uses the English "long e"/"ee" sound (IPA /iː/). The restored pronunciation and English-style pronunciation have competed for a while; I forget exactly when the English-style pronunciation stopped being used in Latin pedagody in England. (It seems to have occured before 1920: John Sargeaunt's description published that year of The Pronunciation of English Words derived from the Latin says "This pronunciation is now out of fashion".)

But I have never heard of /niːki(ː)/, /niːkeɪ/ or /niːkɛ/ being a common pronuncation in present-day English. The pronunciation of a vowel in a word from Greek or Latin according to one pronunciation system or the other is often inconsistent and hard to explain; e.g. restored /ɑː/ is almost always used nowadays in the word "drama", but fairly rarely used in the word "data" (a word that also shows variation, apparently especially in American English, between a pronunciation with English "long a"—which is what would be regular according to the "traditional" system—and one with English "short a").

The only alternative that seems to exist is the spelling-pronunciation /naɪk/ mentioned in the first sentence and in the comments above.

(The name "Irene", as Kate Bunting mentioned, also comes from a Greek form ending in η. The pronunciation ending in /n/ might be a spelling pronunciation; I think I have also read an alternative explanation of it as possibly being influenced by the pronunciation of the French form Irène. Final vowels in Latin/Greek words correspond to "mute e" a bit more often in French than in present-day English; another similar example is the word systole, from Ancient Greek συστολή, where the final "e" is mute in French but not in standard present-day English.)

History of the transliteration "Nike": my amateur findings

I'm confident that "Nike" is pronounced /ˈnaɪki/ in accordance with the "traditional English pronunciation of Latin", but as I mentioned, I am less certain about when this pronunciation became established, since the earliest use of "Nike" in English that the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) records is from 1846:

T. S. Carr Man[ual of] Classical Mythol[ogy] xvi. 144 Nike..or ‘Victory’, was the daughter of Pallas & Styx, and was greatly honoured by the Greeks... Sometimes she is repersented as borne in the hand of Minerva.

Actually, looking through Google Books there seem to be at least a few somewhat older examples:

And there is a slightly older example of "NIKE" being used as the transliteration of the word in reference to the concept of victory, rather than the goddess:

  • 1827-8, The Botanic Garden:

    A Greek etymology has been given to it [the name Veronica] from PHERO, to bear ; and NIKE, victory

The 19th century may seem a bit late for the first recorded occurences in English of a name that dates back to antiquity. My guess is that it may have been more common in the past to simply spell the word/name in the Greek alphabet, which used to be more commonly used in scholarly works in English than it is presently. And rather than giving a transliteration of the Greek, a translation as "victory/Victory" or a Latin translation "victoria/Victoria" might be given alongside (or simply instead of) the Greek-alphabet spelling.

Some examples of "Νίκη/ΝΙΚΗ" being used without transliteration in English texts from before the 1840s:

"Nice": an alternative transliteration that I don't think has been used much

A transliteration more along the lines of conventional Classical Latin adaptation of Greek loanwords into Latin would use C instead of K, resulting in "Nice" (compare "cinematic" and "kinematic" for a similar example of variation that is actually lexicalized). The regular pronunciation of this would be /ˈnaɪsi/, although I guess it's impossible to know for sure how people actually intended for it to be pronounced (some people apparently pronounce "encephalitis" with a /k/ sound, despite the spelling).

It's been hard for me to find evidence of "Nice" being used to refer to the Greek goddess of victory, because it has certain homographs that are more common: the adjective "nice", the French place-name "Nice"—which interestingly enough actually is derived from Greek νίκη—and the place name "Nice" that was used in the past to refer to the ancient city of Nic(a)ea in Anatolia, location of the Christian ecumenical council called the "First Council of Nicaea" or "First Council of Nice".

But "Nice" is used in at least one source as a transliteration of the name of this goddess:

As you can see, it appears to be a revised version of the 1819 Pantalogia entry that used "νικη".

The transliteration "Nice" for the name of a mythological human woman, and for the non-personified concept of victory, seems to occur in Bell's New Pantheon (1790) and in A Dictionary of Polite Literature, Or, Fabulous History of the Heathen Gods (1804):

NICE. Daughter of Thespius.
NICE MARATHONI. A Grecian anniversary observed by Athenians upon the 6th of Boedromion, in memory of that famous victory which Miltiades obtained over the Persians at Marathon.

The related name "Berenice" is often spelled with "c", as is the derived name "Bernice" and the probably-derived name "Veronica".

The transliteration "Nike" is also used in German, and has been for some time

As DavePhD pointed out in a comment, it is possible to find the transliteration "Nike" in use in German texts from before 1846:

This 1814 German Mythology and Religion dictionary has a big entry for "Nike" Wörterbuch der altklassischen Mythologie und Religion (etc.) – DavePhD

Another example of "Nike" used in German can be seen in the following text from 1841: Nike in Hellenischen Vasenbildern; eine archaeologische Untersuchung, by Georg Rathgeber.

This makes me wonder if the use of the spelling "Nike" in German scholarly works might have had some influence on the use of "k" rather than "c" in this name in present-day English. It seems at least possible to me, but I don't know how plausible it is.

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herisson
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  • This 1814 German Mythology and Religion dictionary has a big entry for "Nike" https://books.google.com/books?id=fRFLAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA227&dq=%22Nike%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjKrvj_8dLXAhWELVAKHWHSC5kQ6AEIZjAJ#v=onepage&q=%22Nike%22&f=false – DavePhD Nov 22 '17 at 19:23
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    'Irene' is traditionally pronounced with three syllables in Britain (c.f. dramatisations of 'The Forsyte Saga'). E.G. Withycombe in her 'Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names' (1945) says 'The American disyllabic pronunciation is now often used in England'. – Kate Bunting Nov 23 '17 at 09:15
  • Thanks for including that link to Nike Chairman Philip Knight confirming the "official" pronunciation is 'Ni-key'. – Dhaust Nov 23 '17 at 22:45
  • @KateBunting Irene comes from the Ancient Greek eirḗnē ("peace") which is trisyllabic (note the final long e). Thus the British preserve it better :) – ktm5124 Nov 25 '17 at 06:33
  • Nike is similar. It comes from the Ancient Greek nī́kē which is disyllabic. I would expect Greek words to be pronounced similar to how Greeks would pronounce them, even if the vowels change. Irene is an exception... sumelic makes a good point that it might be influenced by the French cognate. Whereas English and French have an abundance of silent e's, the same is not true for Greek. – ktm5124 Nov 25 '17 at 06:36
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    Wasn't a lot of scholarly work just not done in English prior to that time period, anyway? E.g., Newton published Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica in Latin in 1687, less than 200 years earlier, so when did scholarly work begin to get done in English? – jpmc26 Nov 25 '17 at 08:46
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    I don’t think carpe (diem) is a good example to bring in here—at least in my experience, most people tend to pronounce that /ˡkɑrpeɪ/, not /ˡkɑrpi/. An excellent answer apart from that minor point! – Janus Bahs Jacquet Nov 25 '17 at 10:26
  • Good point! I was just thinking surely there must be better examples of Latin e-final words where the older system remains common. Can’t think of any off the top of my head, though. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Nov 25 '17 at 11:06
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It is important to remember that English spelling, traditionally, has no intention of describing pronunciation - its intent is rather to describe etymology (ie word origin). Only incidentally, through the etymology, is the proper pronunciation deduced. That is why Spelling Bees are so entrancing in English, and yet absurd in nearly every other language.

Pieter Geerkens
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    That is an unkind thing to say. It is also very true. – RedSonja Nov 23 '17 at 10:05
  • @RedSonja What is unkind? – Sabuncu Nov 23 '17 at 17:04
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    Revealing the truth about English spelling. Though maybe they made it that way just to torture primary school kids and foreigners. – RedSonja Nov 23 '17 at 17:37
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    @RedSonja: When the King James Bible and Book of Common Prayer were written, standardizing English spelling: (a) dictionaries didn't exist; and (b) *every* learned person knew Latin and at least a smattering of Greek and French. By using spelling to signal etymology, the meaning of words was made immediately obvious to most readers without a need for a dictionary. Like a reverse spelling bee. – Pieter Geerkens Nov 23 '17 at 20:06
  • This is a super-interesting comment. Do you have further references on this? – mattdm Nov 25 '17 at 17:51
  • @mattdm: What part of it isn't obvious once noticed? Universities taught their entire curriculum in Latin and Greek at the time. French was the lingua franca of the time, and for another several hundred years. Why are Spelling Bee contestants allowed, nay taught and coached, to inquire on language of origin for each word before ever answering? – Pieter Geerkens Nov 26 '17 at 01:13
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    @PieterGeerkens There are many tidbits of etymology "fact" which sound "obvious once noticed" but which are, actually, not true. There are plenty of other reasons that could explain this. – mattdm Nov 26 '17 at 05:16
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    I think you are overstating things. English spelling is complicated and people have had many intents for its use, not just one. Etymology has been involved--as in "type", from Greek "typos"--but pronunciation has also been involved--as in "matter", which is spelled with two "t"s even though it comes from Latin "materia" with only one "t". And some words are spelled in ways that don't seem to have any explanation in terms of pronunciation or etymology: for example, "cedar", which comes from French cedre, Latin cedrus, Greek kedros; the Old English spelling was "ceder". – herisson Nov 27 '17 at 20:31
  • @sumelic: Perhaps I exaggerate (slightly) for comic effect. The question seems to presuppose that the spelling is *primarily* designed to communicate pronunciation; which is patently absurd given the wide variety of pronunciations native to just London, never mind encompassing Australia, the Hebrides, Boston, Texas, Toronto, and New Delhi, just for starters. – Pieter Geerkens Nov 27 '17 at 20:35
  • There is a difference between the details of an accent, and the sound system of a language. The sound systems of the various Englishes are much more similar than the mere inventory of phonetic realizations of those systems. For example, even if the word "city" is pronounced with different vowel sounds by different English speakers, it will rhyme with the word "pity" pronounced by the same speaker for almost all of them. – herisson Nov 27 '17 at 20:38
  • @sumelic: Funny you should use that example; both come to English from Latin (pietas and civitas) via Old French; and both base roots also rhyme in the original Latin. – Pieter Geerkens Nov 27 '17 at 20:41
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Because it is a name and just like any other name, the entity that owns that name gets to decide how it is pronounced.

Kevin
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    Did Subaru decide it should be pronounced differently in different countries, or was that decided for them? Did the Lego Group decide that it should be pronounced "legos" in the USA, or was that decided for them? – Oddthinking Nov 22 '17 at 17:11
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    People choosing to ignore your preference, or being ignorant of your preference, doesn't change how it should be pronounced. My name is Kevin. The fact that some people pronounce it Kelvin doesn't change that. – Kevin Nov 22 '17 at 17:24
  • No, but because the original name it was based on has a real 'e' at the end, as other answers have already described. – Gábor Nov 22 '17 at 20:54
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    "No no no, it's spelt, 'Raymond Luxury Yacht', but it's pronounced, 'Throat Warbler Mangrove'". I think people only get to say how their name should be pronounced within certain conventional bounds. – Scortchi - Reinstate Monica Nov 23 '17 at 17:25
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    So, we need to ask the Goddess Nike how to pronounce her name? I'm not sure that is practical any longer. The shoe company might still be able to express a preference, but what if they do not choose to do so, or worse, have multiple spokespersons who recommend different pronunciations? – Richard Hussong Nov 24 '17 at 03:52
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    @Scortchi Who decides where those conventional bounds end? At what point does it become acceptable for others to say, “No, that’s not your name. You’ve been pronouncing it wrong all your life. We decide what your name is”? I’ve met people called Fhraoich and Dearbhfhlaith who pronounced their names ‘Ree’ and ‘Jerla’, respectively—would you ‘correct’ them? As you can probably tell, I would disagree very much with such a ‘correction’. I may cringe inwardly at someone called ‘Le-a’ pronouncing her name ‘Ledasha’, but it’s her name, and I have no say in the matter. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Nov 24 '17 at 17:16
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    @JanusBahsJacquet: Should've written "people typically decide how [..]" - it's reasonable to suspect that Nike didn't pluck 'nigh-key' out of thin air & therefore 'because Nike say so' isn't an adequate answer. (All the same I suppose I meant what I wrote. Mr Yacht stretches the meaning of 'pronunciation' beyond breaking point, just as Humpty Dumpty does with the meaning of 'meaning'. Fhraoich presumably pronounces her name 'Ree' because that approximates how it sounds in Gaelic. If she preferred to go by 'Heather', we'd express it thus rather than saying she pronounces her name 'Heather'.) – Scortchi - Reinstate Monica Nov 25 '17 at 16:51
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    @Scortchi I agree that “Because Nike say so” isn’t adequate on its own, since it doesn’t say anything about where they got it from. And also that Mr Yacht is stretching the meaning of pronunciation. I just think that’s his prerogative—if Mr Yacht wants to pronounce his name Mr Mangrove, that’s up to him. He just shouldn’t come crying when people who aren’t aware of this call him Mr Yacht, ‘cause it’s his own bloody fault for being so counterintuitive. (Fhraoich, of course, isn’t a name at all in Gaelic as such—that’s Fraoch. Her parents just saw it somewhere and liked it.) – Janus Bahs Jacquet Nov 25 '17 at 16:57
  • @JanusBahsJacquet: Eilean an Fhraoich ('island of the heather') perhaps? Anyway, the above was just pseudy musing - I don't advocate correcting people's pronunciation of their own names. – Scortchi - Reinstate Monica Nov 25 '17 at 17:09
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    @Scortchi Possibly—there are quite a few place names with ‘heather’ in the genitive, and not knowing any Gaelic, they apparently didn’t figure out that (an) Fhraoich is the genitive. (Or indeed that it’s specifically the genitive of the masculine variant of the word. Since the bearer of the name ended up being their daughter, they might at least have gone with the feminine equivalent fraoighe instead…) – Janus Bahs Jacquet Nov 25 '17 at 17:12
  • Don’t see why not. They’ve spent millions on marketing, right? Surely they’ve had some choice in how to say the name in advertising. – Tom Kelly Nov 26 '17 at 00:28
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    I've actually had to correct somebody's pronunciation of their own name, and they were grateful for it. צדק (Tzedek, which means "Justice") had recently moved from Japan to Israel and would pronounce his own name "סדק" (sedek, which means "fissure"). I corrected him and I still do not know to this day if he had changed his name upon arriving in Israel or if he used that name in Japan as well. – dotancohen Nov 26 '17 at 13:43
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    @Oddthinking "Legos" is wrong in any language https://english.stackexchange.com/q/10839/71276 Of course incorrect usage exists but a common mistake isn't any less of a mistake. – Adam Eberbach Nov 27 '17 at 22:41
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    @AdamEberbach: "a common mistake isn't any less of a mistake" - that's a prescriptionist approach. A descriptivist would disagree with you. The top answer on that question makes it clear that the owner of the product is not the owner of the language. – Oddthinking Nov 28 '17 at 00:18
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I would have said either "naik" ( I am in Scotland, so that is the accepted way to say it" or "nee-keh" as that is closer to the original Greek for Νίκη (not ηικε like I thought, thanks to sumelic). Proper names do not change due to the language they are spoken in: they retain the sound they are meant to have in the language of their origin.

GMasucci
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    The original Greek is νίκη (or Νίκη), not ηικε. There are many proper names that are standardly pronounced differently in English than in the language of origin: e.g. Paris, Zeus, Hades. – herisson Nov 23 '17 at 16:38
  • Even the pronunciation of unfamiliar proper names from other languages is changed to fit into the English phonetic system, & sometimes also to conform to how they're spelt. – Scortchi - Reinstate Monica Nov 23 '17 at 17:15
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    The last sentence in this answer is almost precisely the reverse of actual reality. Proper names almost always change when they’re borrowed into a different language; they hardly ever retain their original sound, for the simple reason that very few language pairs have identical sound inventories. People tend to make more of an effort to approximate the original pronunciation with proper names, but that’s a very different thing. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Nov 24 '17 at 17:29
  • I speak 5 languages, and can read another half a dozen at least enough to get by: in all the learning I have done, and from every instruction I have taken, proper names always retain their proper pronunciation in their native tongue. If there is a translated version of the name then that version is used, otherwise the native version remains (i.e. Naples for Napoli, however my name is Giovanni in any language, and always pronounced joh-VAHN-nee). On a minor aside, spelt is a grain, the word you meant to use was spelled Scortchi :D. – GMasucci Nov 29 '17 at 10:23
  • @GMasucci then you haven't heard an American mispronounced your name, because I have heard plenty of non-native Italian and spanish speakers (mis)pronounce Giovanni as GEE-oh-vah-nee https://community.babycenter.com/post/a26689583/pronounce_giovanni – Mari-Lou A Nov 29 '17 at 10:42
  • Hah:) I have indeed heard that from native English speakers from UK, USA and elsewhere, and always correct them: mistakes happen, just don't tolerate repeated wilful mistaken (i.e. wrong) pronunciation. Wow I wish I had been part of that conversation:) – GMasucci Nov 29 '17 at 10:49
  • @GMasucci "spelt" in BrEng is not only a type of grain, it's also the past simple of the verb "spell", American English considers it a regular verb. – Mari-Lou A Nov 29 '17 at 18:41
  • lol yep i know, I hate the word though as the past participle or simple past tense of spell. I am quite anachronistic myself in language, as it is often more concise and less ambiguous. Spelt I would also take as an Irishism, and I was just being plain cheeky/facetious :D I know both forms (spelled/spelt) are used, however I prefer the correct one ;) – GMasucci Nov 30 '17 at 12:05
  • The proper name Irene (from the Greek, meaning peace, and pronounced with three syllables) is in English pronounced with two, not three syllables. – Arm the good guys in America Dec 01 '17 at 14:30
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The answer should be 'it's meant to be ˈnʌɪki rather than ˈnʌɪk. How it has been hitherto pronounced in practice is the way how it should be! That is how language goes on in English. We should not make up pseudo-rules here.

ODO:

Nike /ˈnʌɪki / Greek Mythology

the goddess of victory.

– ORIGIN Greek, literally ‘victory’.

'Why questions' are tricky in any discipline. Please listen to Richard Feynman:

https://youtu.be/wMFPe-DwULM

herisson
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Ludwig Wittgenstein
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Why is synecdoche pronounced si-NEK-də-kee?

/sɪˈnɛkdəki/

Because that's the way the cookie crumbles.
Oh, and because it derives from Greek too

Latin, from Greek synekdochē, from syn- + ekdochē sense, interpretation, from ekdechesthai to receive, understand, from ex from + dechesthai to receive; akin to Greek dokein to “seem good” First Known Use: 15th century

Courtesy of Merriam-Webster

Merriam Webster also informs that the first appearance of the name Nike in English was in 1846, which seems rather recent. Etymonline offers no etymology of the name nor any dates; however, it says it was used as the name for U.S. defensive surface-to-air missiles from 1952. Wikipedia opines that Nike has uncertain etymology.

Mari-Lou A
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