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HelpThis name is oddly English....
SINJIN
Gender: Masculine
Usage: English (Rare)
Variant of the name St. John (see JOHN).
What do you think?
Gender: Masculine
Usage: English (Rare)
Variant of the name St. John (see JOHN).
What do you think?
Archived Thread - replies disabled
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Replies
I always think it doesn't sound at all English either, and while I find that very interesting it also turns me off the name.
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Another bell has just rung in my head: Norman St John-Stevas! He was a UK politician in the Thatcher days, and just look at what Wikipedia has to say about him:
'Lord St John is noted for his large number of personal affectations, including proffering his hand in papal fashion, lapsing into Latin while speaking, and deliberately mispronouncing modern words.'
He was elevated to the peerage, as they say, when he retired from active politics and is now Lord Sinjin, phonetically speaking. But don't you love the notion of the pompous old twit 'mispronouncing modern words' ... presumably so as to discipline the rest of us!
'Lord St John is noted for his large number of personal affectations, including proffering his hand in papal fashion, lapsing into Latin while speaking, and deliberately mispronouncing modern words.'
He was elevated to the peerage, as they say, when he retired from active politics and is now Lord Sinjin, phonetically speaking. But don't you love the notion of the pompous old twit 'mispronouncing modern words' ... presumably so as to discipline the rest of us!
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Not sure about the English bit, but with that spelling it's certainly odd.
I could understand anyone who heard the name and liked it but had never seen it written down making a guess at Sinjin; but it's still hard on the bearer to have to go through life explaining! Rather use the actual spelling. He'd still have to explain, probably, but at least he'd be explaining a genuine pronunciation instead of a spelling error.
Edited to add: my friend's grandmother when we were kids was a Mrs Saintjohn.
I could understand anyone who heard the name and liked it but had never seen it written down making a guess at Sinjin; but it's still hard on the bearer to have to go through life explaining! Rather use the actual spelling. He'd still have to explain, probably, but at least he'd be explaining a genuine pronunciation instead of a spelling error.
Edited to add: my friend's grandmother when we were kids was a Mrs Saintjohn.
This message was edited 2/15/2010, 10:24 PM
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Why?
Why is St. John pronounced "sinjin"? It defies modern pronunciation. We do not pronounce "saint" like "sin" or "John" like "jin" in English. I've never heard this pronunciation and it makes absolutely no sense to me, especially coming from a culture that pronounces phonetically "Don Quixote" as "Don Quicks-Oat" and "Don Juan" as "Don Jew-in."
Can someone shed some light on this? Is it from the French pronunciation or something?
Why is St. John pronounced "sinjin"? It defies modern pronunciation. We do not pronounce "saint" like "sin" or "John" like "jin" in English. I've never heard this pronunciation and it makes absolutely no sense to me, especially coming from a culture that pronounces phonetically "Don Quixote" as "Don Quicks-Oat" and "Don Juan" as "Don Jew-in."
Can someone shed some light on this? Is it from the French pronunciation or something?
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oh do we?
I've never heard quicks-oat/jewin
I've never heard quicks-oat/jewin
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I've never heard "Quicks-oat" or "Jew-in" either, but I am American. *shrug*
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Australians say quicks-oat. :/
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I'm speaking of British English, not American English. I don't know where you live, but in America, typically you do hear Spanish pronunciations.
The poem "Don Juan" by Lord Byron uses the pronunciation "jewin." It may be intentional mispronunciation, but it's a famous work of English poetry that uses an incorrect pronunciation.
And as for Don Quixote --
Wikipedia sources the American Heritage Book of English Usage for the sentence: "English speakers generally attempt something close to the modern Spanish pronunciation when saying Quixote/Quijote, as [dɒŋ kiːˈhoʊteɪ], although the traditional English pronunciation /ˈkwɪksət/ or /ˈkwɪksoʊt/ is still frequently used, more in the United Kingdom than in the United States... The traditional English rendering is preserved in the pronunciation of the adjectival form quixotic, i.e., /kwɪkˈsoʊtɨk/."
The poem "Don Juan" by Lord Byron uses the pronunciation "jewin." It may be intentional mispronunciation, but it's a famous work of English poetry that uses an incorrect pronunciation.
And as for Don Quixote --
Wikipedia sources the American Heritage Book of English Usage for the sentence: "English speakers generally attempt something close to the modern Spanish pronunciation when saying Quixote/Quijote, as [dɒŋ kiːˈhoʊteɪ], although the traditional English pronunciation /ˈkwɪksət/ or /ˈkwɪksoʊt/ is still frequently used, more in the United Kingdom than in the United States... The traditional English rendering is preserved in the pronunciation of the adjectival form quixotic, i.e., /kwɪkˈsoʊtɨk/."
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I've never heard of that
I'm British and I've never heard anyone use those pronunciations here.
I'm British and I've never heard anyone use those pronunciations here.
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The fashion for using "authentic" pronunciations for originally foreign names is a recent one. Browning could and did rhyme 'Calais' with 'malice' quite comfortably, and Maria was Ma RYE a until the end of the 19th century, more or less. Peking has only recently become Beijing.
As for Saintjohn, aka Sinjin, think about saints and churches. In British English certainly, one would worship at Sin Thomas's, though not on Sin Valentine's Day. As a ln, and later a fn, the emphasis in Saintjohn is on the first syllable, leaving the second one unstressed; instead of the usual schwa (upside-down e neutral vowel), as we would expect for a middle-to-low vowel, the influence of the i in the stressed syllable raises the schwa to an i.
QED?
As for Saintjohn, aka Sinjin, think about saints and churches. In British English certainly, one would worship at Sin Thomas's, though not on Sin Valentine's Day. As a ln, and later a fn, the emphasis in Saintjohn is on the first syllable, leaving the second one unstressed; instead of the usual schwa (upside-down e neutral vowel), as we would expect for a middle-to-low vowel, the influence of the i in the stressed syllable raises the schwa to an i.
QED?
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interesting
sort of reminds me of a phenomenon surrounding the name of a town near where I live. The town is named Lafayette, which should be correctly pronounced something like la-fye-ETT, but which is pronounced by the natives phonetically, La-FAY-it. (I live in the south and we turn our e's to i's all the time.) The thing is, I live in Alabama, and almost everyone in Lafayette has a really strong accent; almost always when you hear FAY-it, it is actually just Fett stretched out and twanged by the dialect. So those of us without strong southern accents calmly and automatically correct the phonetic La-FAY-it to La-FETT.
So we're actually pretty wrong!
Anyway.
I had a teach in HS surnamed St. John and everyone just said Saint John. Sinjin wouldn't have occurred to me before I was a namenerd
In general I think it's pretty OK to adopt names into your own language rules.
sort of reminds me of a phenomenon surrounding the name of a town near where I live. The town is named Lafayette, which should be correctly pronounced something like la-fye-ETT, but which is pronounced by the natives phonetically, La-FAY-it. (I live in the south and we turn our e's to i's all the time.) The thing is, I live in Alabama, and almost everyone in Lafayette has a really strong accent; almost always when you hear FAY-it, it is actually just Fett stretched out and twanged by the dialect. So those of us without strong southern accents calmly and automatically correct the phonetic La-FAY-it to La-FETT.
So we're actually pretty wrong!
Anyway.
I had a teach in HS surnamed St. John and everyone just said Saint John. Sinjin wouldn't have occurred to me before I was a namenerd
In general I think it's pretty OK to adopt names into your own language rules.
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Interesting. In the town of Lafayette, California, it is always pronounced "la-fay-ETT" or "la-fee-ETT".
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Wow that's really interesting! Never knew that. Thanks
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It sounds Arabic or Indian
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I love it, but not this phonetic spelling.
Most phonetic spellings feel vaguely insulting to me -- as if I can't be expected to retain information once told how it is to be pronounced. Sure, St. John at first blush does look like it would be pronounced "saint John." But once told it was really "SIN-jin" then I can be trusted to remember that. (But that's the chip on my shoulder talking.)
Most phonetic spellings feel vaguely insulting to me -- as if I can't be expected to retain information once told how it is to be pronounced. Sure, St. John at first blush does look like it would be pronounced "saint John." But once told it was really "SIN-jin" then I can be trusted to remember that. (But that's the chip on my shoulder talking.)
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I first read "Jane Eyre" at the age of about ten, and I thought that the character of St John's name was, you know, Saint John. I considered it a strange, unwieldy name. It wasn't for quite some time, until I saw a television adaptation, that I realized that it was pronounced Sinjin. I just don't think that it would occur to an American.
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I thought the same thing about that character as a child. I didn't know differently until high school.
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It wouldn't occur to me. I never pronounce St or Saint /sin/, or John /jin/. That's just against all rules of pronunciation and spelling I've ever learned.
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It's a very old-fashioned name, it makes me think of someone from the 19th Century.
I think St John is better, I don't like the phonetic spelling.
I think St John is better, I don't like the phonetic spelling.
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sounds East Indian to me. :-)
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ditto
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I thought that St. John was pronounced Sinjin. I don't really see the need for changing the spelling.
The name is pretentious, anyway.
The name is pretentious, anyway.
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I find it odd that it's a variant of a saint name and has the word 'sin' in it.
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