Saying Sotomayor: What's In A Name?

DEEPTI HAJELA

NEW YORK (AP) — In the week since she was named as President Barack Obama's nominee to the Supreme Court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor's name has been on a lot of people's lips.

But people have been saying it differently, touching off culture wars commotion in the process.

She pronounces her own name like this: soh-toh-my-YOR' — accent on the final syllable. But plenty of TV news anchors have put the accent on the first syllable (SOH'-tuh-my-er), or come up with some other mangled variation.

On the "Late Show," David Letterman had a segment called the "Sonia Sotomayor Pronunciation Round-up," and on "The Daily Show," host Jon Stewart showed a montage of TV news pundits and reporters saying it all kinds of ways.

Sotomayor describes herself as a Nuyorican, a term that generally refers to a New Yorker of Puerto Rican descent. She was born in the Bronx, but she pronounces her name with Spanish-language intonation, with a half-trill on the "r'' at the end of her last name.

Mark Krikorian (kri-KOR'-ee-uhn), an advocate of tougher immigration standards and a contributor to the conservative National Review, said putting the emphasis on the last syllable in Sotomayor's name is an "unnatural pronunciation" in English.