Pronouncing Dictionary of the Supreme Court of the United States

Although the United States is famously a nation of immigrants, Americans often struggle with the pronunciation of foreign words and names. Mispronunciation of even common foreign words is ubiquitous (Eye-rack and Eye-ran spring to mind). Foreign names in legal matters present a particular challenge for legal professionals. The purpose of the Pronouncing Dictionary of United States Supreme Court cases, compiled by YLS students Usha Chilukuri, Megan Corrarino, Brigid Davis, Kate Hadley, Daniel Jang, Sally Pei, and Yale University Linguistics Department students Diallo Spears and Jason Zentz, working with Florence Rogatz Visiting Lecturer in Law Eugene Fidell, is to help conscientious lawyers, judges, teachers, students, and journalists correctly pronounce often-perplexing case names.

They link to a PDF of the article explaining how the pronunciations were found. In some cases there are audio files of the cases.

There are plenty of audio examples, and where a surname is German, they have an American pronouncing it and often a German too. For example, in an 1891 case there was an Oelrichs, and here the American and German pronunciations diverge. I don’t know whether the person in question was a recent German immigrant.

Here, by the way, you can see the distribution of German surnames in Germany.

And here are the real Supremes: Where did our love go?