With hislatest scandalous revelations , former congressman Anthony Weiner has provided another round of giggle - suitable news insurance coverage playing on the connotations of his name . The word “ wiener ” came to think of , well , a man ’s wienerwurst , through its tie-up with a eccentric of sausage from Vienna , theWiener Würstchen . The German word of honor for Vienna isWien , pronounced “ veen , ” and Viennese isWiener , prounounced “ veener . ” In the same manner people say “ Polish ” for Polish sausage balloon , hoi polloi started calling the wiener wurst a “ weener , ” and the word then travel over to the world of other sausage - like aim .
But Anthony Weiner ’s name is not Wiener ! It is spell out with “ ei ” rather than “ ie , ” and in German , “ ei ” is pronounced “ middle , ” as it would be in “ crybaby . ” So why does n’t he use that orthoepy ? What sort of glutton for penalty is he ?
If he endure in Germany , his name would indeed have the “ heart ” pronunciation but in the United States both the “ middle ” and “ ee ” pronunciations show up for this name , for reasons take to do with ethnicity , reasoned drift , and chance . There is a German name Weiner that come from a dialectal orthoepy of Wagner , interrelate to Waggoner , mean Dipper - Jehovah . But Anthony Weiner is Jewish , and concord to dictionaries of Jewish surnames , his name in all likelihood start from the Yiddish name Vayner , mean wine merchandiser . Yiddish is related to German , and Vayner is related to the German wordWeinfor “ vino , ” and pronounced with the “ eye ” vowel sound . But there is another less usual but also predominately Jewish family name Wiener , meaning someone who come from Vienna .
So there have long been two surnames with two pronunciations and two dissimilar but very closemouthed spellings float about in the same American community , and in the process of Americanization things were potential to get mixed up . likely add to the disarray was influence from the discrepant “ ie ” “ ei ” spelling regulation in English , and a slew of common American Scotch names where “ ei ” stood for the “ ee ” sound ( MacLeish , Neil , Reid , Weir , Keith ) .
Of course , in the American tradition , it ’s up to each family to adjudicate how they desire to spell and pronounce their name . If Anthony Weiner wants to reinvent himself again , he could always consider a name change .
