How is "Stouffer" pronounced?

DREW WILEY

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I'd be more worried about their awful offal, or stuffed unicorn stomach pie, or whatever.
 

BobUK

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DREW WILEY I loved the comment about the Liverpudlian or Scousers as we call ourselves.
I am born and bred in Liverpool.
We do eat some strange parts of the animals that others would turn their noses up at. Sheep's hearts, tripe, liver, kidney, black puddings, tongue, pigs trotters, sweetbreads etc., and the strangest thing I ever ate was ducks webs in Liverpool China Town. When cooked correctly these are lovely meats apart from the webs.
If you haven't already, you should give some a try, it's offaly good for you.
 

Sirius Glass

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Much like when were were leaving a Sushi restuarant, one of the women was asked how she liked it. She said "It was ok except for the raw fish."
 

Vaughn

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Getting f@#ked has its positive connotations...
 
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revdoc

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If the following is a reliable source, Stouffer was of Swiss descent, and his family name has been spelled Stauffer, Stover, Stoffer and Stouffer.


I don't think this answers my original question, so I've emailed the company for definitive answer.

If I get a response I'll post it here.
 

grat

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revdoc said:
I don't think this answers my original question, so I've emailed the company for definitive answer.
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You could always just call them. They're guaranteed to answer the phone with "Stouffer Industries" or something similar.

grain elevator said:
Then all is lost. It might originally have been pronounced shdoofrrr or some such...
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Having my family name, which started out as French-Canadian, be totally mangled by a near illiterate Union officer sometime around the Civil War into a simple name that seems to violate all rules of English pronunciation, I can assure you that names become Americanized very, very fast.
 

Sirius Glass

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It was well into the twentieth century that consistent spelling of last names became important. In my family one of last names were spelt with 'f' or 'ff' or 'v', 'l' or 'll', 'en' or 'in'. Just no consistency and some people used multiple spellings. That makes genealogy harders. During the Depression as part of a work project the Commerce Department had a system set up to take the spelling of a name translated to phonetics and then search for variations. That tool today is a key to tracing one's family.
 
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revdoc

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Debbie from Stouffer Industries kindly sent me this link:

Stouffer pronunciation in German

How to say stouffer in German? Pronunciation of stouffer with 1 audio pronunciation and more for stouffer.
www.howtopronounce.com

So it rhymes with "gopher".
 

AgX

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Stouffer is no german word, there is no ou diphtong in German, thus there is no true german pronunciation.


What we got is Stauffer, but I got no idea whether there is a relation. But so far I have not come it across as family name, but I found 20 hits in the german phonebook...
ʃtaʊfər
 
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revdoc

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Interesting. When I was trying to answer this question initially, I found quite a few references to people called "Stouffer" in north America. Some were Mennonite migrants. One was Abraham Stouffer, who founded a village called Stouffville in Canada, which is pronounced with the same vowel sound suggested by the link I posted above. Just to be annoying, his forebears also spelt their names as "Stauffer".
 

AgX

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To indicate the pronunciation of "Stauffer", think of "Shtoufer". With the ou as in noun.

Thus in this case Stouffer would indeed be the americanized form.
 

koraks

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revdoc said:
So it rhymes with "gopher".
Click to expand...

The pronunciation on that website has nothing to do with German whatsoever. It's a poor synthesis of an American/English approximation of what German might have sounded like to the ears of American software engineers. Debbie in all likelihood means well, and perhaps the pronunciation she linked to is indeed the pronunciation they prefer and hence, it's very legitimate, but it is NOT German in any way.
 

AgX

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As Koraks indicated there is a lot of nonsense around concerning pronunciations.
Even statements by the original, foreign company cannot be trusted (e.g. Gevaert in a US ad), as this may have been deliberately changed to please or make it easier for the aimed audience.

And even within countries same names may be pronounced differently...




Thus if Stouffer once originated from a german name, then most likely post #42 applies.
 

koraks

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AgX said:
Thus if Stouffer once originated from a german name, then most likely post #42 applies.
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I don't think I agree with this, because fact of the matter is that regardless of their origins, they're an American company, and however they themselves choose to pronounce their name would for me be the only relevant benchmark. This might very well be, and quite likely is, a travesty of how a German would pronounce it, but this doesn't matter as it's not German - it's American now. Similar to the various German names and locales currently in France (e.g. Alsace region) and their current pronunciation and countless other examples of linguistic re-appropriation, migration and borrowing.
 

AgX

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I did not advise how to pronounce Stouffer, but only how to pronounce Stauffer.


And this only as (to my understanding) the firm itself hinted at a German origin of their name and were in the belief that they pronounced it the german way.

One may now argue based on the latter whether they want to pronounce it the german way. For an established firm changing their name pronunciation then seems not practical to me.


But as I hinted at, there may not even be a single way for a firm "themselves [to] choose to pronounce their name", but different, depending on markets.
 
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AgX

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AgX said:
And even within countries same names may be pronounced differently...
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This may mean a different pronunciation in different parts of a country, but also different pronunciations or pronunciations being not clear at local level.
The latter is typical for those parts of Europe were a variety of reigns, languages or even people were established. This to an extent that even foreign diphtongs exist in local names.
 

Europan

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It is simple. Stouffer is the notation of the original pronunciation in Berndüütsch, Bernese German. That is like in know. Stauffer is modernised or high German and sounds like how.
 

AgX

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This contradicts what I said in #42. I already gave the notation in standard form and in improvised form. I doubt that Stauffer in Berndüütsch is pronounced othr then that, though you indicate so

Thus Stouffer to me is not an English notation, but a spelling that fits the usual English pronunciation better.
 

AgX

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But we are now on the field of pronunciation details.


If I understood it right the OP learned meanwhile how the Stouffer people pronounce that name themselves and this was his issue.
 
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