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How do you pronounce it, DeSantis or DiSantis? Not even he clarifies himself

2023-06-02T10:44:28.324Z

Highlights: Trump attacks rival for 'changing his name' because Florida governor says his last name in two different ways. There is no clear pattern. The Florida governor and 2024 Republican presidential primary candidate sometimes says DeSantis and sometimes "DiSantis" The last to criticize him has been Donald Trump, who also frequently changes both his own name and surname to try to ridicule him. The difference between the two forms of pronunciation is not as marked as between the Spanish "e" and "i" and the American media, to represent it phonetically.


Trump attacks rival for 'changing his name' because Florida governor says his last name in two different ways


Ron DeSantis pronounces his last name differently on different occasions. There is no clear pattern. The Florida governor and 2024 Republican presidential primary candidate sometimes says DeSantis and sometimes "DiSantis." That change caught the attention of the local media first and then the national ones. The last to criticize him has been Donald Trump, who also frequently changes both his own name and surname to try to ridicule him.

As the launch of his Twitter campaign with Elon Musk stalled, the candidate released his first campaign video on Twitter, which ended: "I'm Ron DeSantis and I'm running for president to lead our great American resurgence." The candidate pronounced his last name clearly as "DiSantis," even though the media routinely referred to him as "DeSantis." Are the media wrong? It's not that simple: DeSantis himself has spoken numerous times.

The first to publicly draw attention to that discrepancy was the local Tampa Bay Times in 2018, when DeSantis was first running for governor. "Even if he becomes the 46th governor of Florida, we may never get to decipher the biggest mystery of all: how the hell is his name pronounced?" they wrote, after pointing out, among others, an election video of the candidate in which Ron DiSantis clearly pronounced and another famous video of that same campaign in which his wife called him Ron DeSantis.

The confusion has continued over time, with comings and goings. In a video from the 2012 campaign to run for the House of Representatives, the speaker was Ron "DiSantis." But when he took office in 2016, he was running as Ron DeSantis.

You don't even have to spend that much time between one pronunciation and another. When the governor congratulated the last day of Thanksgiving he did it as Ron DeSantis, but that same month, when congratulating Diwali, he was "DiSantis".

There are many other examples. The difference between the two forms of pronunciation is not as marked as between the Spanish "e" and "i". The American media, to represent it phonetically, speak of Ron Dee-Santis, for the pronunciation with i, and of Ron Deh-Santis or Ron Da-Santis, for the one most similar to an "e".

His wife, Casey DeSantis, has been more faithful to a single pronunciation and uses her husband's last name, which she herself has adopted, like DeSantis, pronounced with "e". The voiceover of the campaign ad she starred in in 2018 also pronounces her name with "e." The first lady of Florida made another video about who Ron DeSantis is, in which she gets excited, in which she says another three times clearly DeSantis with "e". It remains to be seen whether now that her husband has launched the campaign for president as "DiSantis," she will change her phoneme.

DeSantis is an Italian surname, language in which the vowel is pronounced as it is written. Surnames with Di are also frequent in Italian, such as Di Caprio, Di Marco, Di Francesco... In English, the vowel "e" is usually pronounced like the "i" in Spanish, so when the governor of Florida uses it it is as if he were making an Anglo-Saxon adaptation. Many surnames, on the other hand, were mistranscribed when Italian immigrants arrived in the United States. There would therefore be reasons to defend one or the other pronouncement. The strange thing is to use both.

Trump, who has said of his rival in the Republican primaries that "he needs a personality transplant", has taken the opportunity to attack him again. The former president, short and fond of nicknames, had already changed his surname. He calls him Ron DeSanctimonious, the prude, or Ron DeSanctus. And he has also changed his own name, taking advantage of the fact that a British media made a mistake and called him Rob DeSantis. Calling him "Rob" (they put him in quotes as if quoting the British media) is a way of saying that he is a nobody, whose name is not even known.

DeSantis' different pronunciation of his own last name was too good for his rival to let slip: "Have you heard that 'Rob' DeSanctimonious wants to change his name, again? It demands that people call it DeeeSantis, instead of DaSantis. Actually, I like "Da" better, a nicer flow, so I'm happy I'm changing it. He gets very angry when people, including journalists, don't pronounce it correctly. So, shouldn't he care about DeSanctimonious?" he wrote Wednesday on his social network.

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Source: elparis

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