In a current TV commercial for a luxury car brand, I noticed the announcer pronounced the vehicle Jag-U-Ar, instead of Ja-Guar, which is the way I have pronounced it my whole life.
I’m certain the reason I never noticed this before is because I am way too gauche to be in the market for a luxury car. Nonetheless, this pronunciation surprised me and made me wonder… has Jaguar always been pronounced Jag-U-Ar? Or is this a new development, kind of like when my childhood-friend-turned-Hollywood-actress, Kirsten, announced that she suddenly wanted everyone to pronounce her name KEER-sten, rather KUR-sten, which for some reason she deemed not cool enough for her new Hollywood image. The weird thing about it was that KEER-sten acted like it was the most natural and obvious thing in the world for her childhood friends to start calling her by a revised name, even though everyone had been calling her KUR-sten FOREVER. And when I think of her, I still think KUR-sten. (Sorry KEER-sten.)
However, names and pronunciation can be a tricky thing. I admit it was a stroke of genius for JK Rowling to refer to the biggest, ugliest, most evil baddie in the Harry Potter books as He Who Cannot Be Named rather than Voldemort, which actually sounds like a German automobile to me. But I have yet to understand why Prince thought it would be better to change his name to a symbol, which couldn’t be pronounced at all. People were then forced to call him The Artist Formerly Known As Prince, which seemed significantly more tedious than calling him Prince in the first place.
But back to the British luxury car, Jaguar… I tried to consult the Great Oracle of Our Time (Google) to determine what the proper pronunciation should be and was assaulted with a barrage of vociferous posts, articles and discussions about Jag-Wire, Jag-Wahr and Jag-You-Are. Since this argument appears to have been going on for years, I refused to click on any links because any more information was certain to confuse and disturb me more.
So I’m leaving Ja-Guar as it is and will assume that just like To-May-To and To-Mah-To, there are certain English vs King’s English camps that will never agree.
Now, when it comes to Jaguar, the big cat of the Panthera genus, which is a large feline, second only to the lion and tiger, I will completely trust Wikipedia for the proper pronunciation, which is this:
ˈdʒæɡjuːər, ˈdʒæɡjʊər, ˈdʒæɡjuːɑr/ or /ˈdʒæɡwɑr/
Good grief. I’m way too gauche to understand that.
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photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/23315629@N08/2728224759″>Kühlerfigur Jaguar</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/”>(license)</a>
photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/8070463@N03/7672381218″>Porgy yawning and walking</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/”>(license)</a>