Celebrity Names Everyone Mispronounces

May 2024 ยท 1 minute read

Over the course of his incredible career, David Bowie reinvented himself numerous times. That makes it even more appropriate that when he was interviewed by Jeremy Paxman in 2000. he admitted that he had lost track of just what the proper pronunciation of his name actually was. Bowie adopted the now-famous moniker in place of his birth name to avoid being confused with another up-and-coming singer, Davy Jones, of the Monkees. David Jones became first (and briefly) Tom Jones, and finally, David Bowie.

Mispronunciations have included "Boo-ey," like the knife, "Bow-ie" (like "Cow-ie"), and "Bough-ie." Even when his death made headlines in 2016, it seems the press could not agree on a pronunciation.

According to that 2000 interview, Bowie said, "I don't even know how to pronounce it anymore, I've lost track. I always thought it was 'Bough-ie,' I thought, this is a Scottish name, it must be 'Bough-ie.' But no one in Scotland pronounces it like that." In the early 1990s, the rock star appeared on MTV to introduce his videos and pronounced his own name "Bough-ie," which seems to settle the matter.

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