What's in a Name?

(Or, "That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet.")

In the "Comments" section at the end of the previous post, my brother Bob recently raised an interesting question:

How do we pronounce our name?

Since I'd always heard "ALE-ah-wine," I'd thought that query could be answered fairly quickly--but, not so fast! It turns out that a nephew of mine and his wife always say "Aa-lah-wine" (with that first "a" like the "a" in "apple"). Since that nephew grew up hearing from his father the same thing I did from mine (and his dad was another of my brothers), I'm not sure how or when he started saying it differently. However, I hear that pronunciation from people who are struggling to say it as they read from a document--say, the DMV examiner who's trying to pass your new license to you, and the room's full of folks getting one that day.

AND I put up with it a lot in college. Maybe my nephew eventually just gave up and started using the pronunciation himself as a kid, and then it stuck in his own mind.

Through the years there's been a good deal of discussion about this very thing. Back in 1977 in a letter to Beatrice Alewine (Thomas' sister), Alton Alawine commented:

"I was surprised to learn that your family pronounced their name 'Ale-wine' (two syllables). I had assumed that all of the Alewines pronounced the name 'Ale-e-wine' (three syllables), based in part on my conversation with the Alton Alewine of Houston, Texas, several years ago. I asked him about this, and he said his family pronounced their name the same as ours, with three syllables. Also, some of the obvious misspellings in census data indicate that some of the early Alewines in South Carolina pronounced their name with three syllables--that is, if we can assume that the names were spelled according to their sound. For example, the 1820 census for Newberry County includes Elizabeth, Jacob, Joseph and Thomas Alywine." [my emphasis]

(I am as usual depending on my previous correspondence with several family genealogists for reference. Bear with me.)

My father's pronunciation varied a little from how I say the name, now. With him it was "ALE-eh-wine," with a little more "e" in that middle part than I'd have put. When I give my maiden name, I tend to go with "ALE-ah-wine," with more "ah" than "e."

My point here is that we've all probably heard and used different ways of saying it. You may not have stopped to give it a lot of thought, but wherever there are some of us, in different parts of the country, there may be varied pronunciations.

Bob also mentioned that there's a business in California (Alawine.com and https://www.manta.com/c/mm74prx/alawine-marketing) which labels, packs and reviews wines. They, however, are not Alawines, but, instead, use the tag "à la wine," which means, roughly (I guess), "the wine" in French. That indicates the company's name may be pronounced "AH-lah-wine."

I've e-mailed them to find out the answer to this extremely important question. Also to see about a tour, with samples.

A bit of historical context here, thanks to Alton again:

Yes, that's right: Alewines have infested Georgia. And I thought it was mostly Mississippi.

It was my belief and Alton's that the Pennsylvania "Alwines" or "Allwines" (and variations) were probably not related to the Southern bunch of Alewines--at least, not closely enough to count it. Maybe four or five centuries ago, they were. But the fact that their names apparently always had only two syllables and that they are still clustered more or less in the northeast seems to support the theory.

And, anyway, we know which ship the Southern ones sailed in on. More on that, later.

If the name is a problem for people to say even now, 250 years after the Alewine immigrant, it stands to reason that, in the early 1800's, spelling it probably posed a true conundrum for census-takers. 

I hope Alewine/Alawine descendants who read this blog will comment on their own pronunciations of the family name. You could leave a brief statement like, "Two syllables," or, "Three syllables, 'Aa' at the first," or whatever. It might be fun to figure out who says what! 

But, as Shakespeare said, "Thou art thyself....What's in a name?" 

Ælfwine