Question About the Name Louis
 

for everyone who is named louis, are all of their names always pronounced as loo-ii, or are their names sometimes pronounced as loo-iss?

Re: Question About the Name Louis
 

as someone who is not named "louis" it is a name i read as "loo-iss"

Re: Question About the Name Louis
 

Everyone I've ever known with the name it's loo-iss and loo-ii is more like a nickname

Re: Question About the Name Louis
 

Same sort of situation with Illinois, but I'm on the hard S side here

Lou-iss and Illi-noise

Re: Question About the Name Louis
 

oh i see, thank you all :)

Re: Question About the Name Louis
 

I think it depends on where the person is from

I know someone named Louis, he is from portugal and his name is pronounced as loo-ii

There is also a Canadian heritage site called Louisburg with the same pronounciation which was a French military fort

I think it is most commonly spelled as Luis if it is going to be pronounced that way, but it's not unheard of to include the o

Re: Question About the Name Louis
 

i see, thank you :)

Re: Question About the Name Louis
 

Did this come up because you're playing Code Vein? I know they pronounce it Lou-ii in that game, but I couldn't help but read it as Lou-iss every time.

Re: Question About the Name Louis
 

I'm gonna make the video gamer move

and say that since Left 4 Dead, 'Louis' has been loo-iss

and since Pikmin 2, 'Louie' has been loo-ii.

Re: Question About the Name Louis
 

no, i was just wondering; i haven’t heard of that game, and i don’t blame you

oh cool, thank you :)

Re: Question About the Name Louis
 

It's pronounced both (or either). Louis Armstrong went as both LouEE and LouIS. King Louis XIV was LouEE.

Good heuristic:

French, Welsh, or otherwise European: LouEE always
American: Louie is LouEE. Louis is LouIS.

Re: Question About the Name Louis
 

American = North American. Canada adopts this pronounciation.

Unsure about Quebec though.

Re: Question About the Name Louis
 

Sorry, my bias shone through. I meant USA specifically. Can't speak for Canada or South America. I would guess French speakers use "LouEE" for themselves, but maybe "LouISS" when talking about people who go by "LouISS"

Re: Question About the Name Louis
 

The lou-wee etymology is of french influence/heritage. The variants stem from the old frankish name Hlōdowik "equivalent to the modern forms Louis (French), Lodewijk (Dutch), Lewis (English), and Ludwig (German)", with those languages being roughly the inheritors of old frankish.

My guess is the Louis english pronounciation is a simplification of the Lewis form, probably a modern evolution, since the use of the latin pronounciation mostly referred to noble names, as you wouldn't translate or mispronounce them. Louie just being the UK invention for indicating the distinction. But this is all a broad assumption from my linguistic studies days, as is usually the case for the field, since there were no exact ressources to catalog and attest oral phenomenons.

As for Quebec we do pronounce it lou-wee, and we usually don't see any variant other than Louis, apart from surnames and other origins. Here's the rest of the world : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_(given_name)