Dusko Goykovich, R.I.P.

[Dmitry]

15 minutes ago, Big Beat Steve said:

 I have a Yugoslavian LP with a selection of jazz groups form Belgrade here that were recorded from 1955 to 1962. Guess how "jazz" is also spelled in the (Roman-letter) cover text and many of the "period" band names? "DZEZ"! Strictly phonetic, and apparently quite in earnest ... But they have a way with foreign names over there anyway - even when NO Kyrillic transliteration is involved ...

In Russian jazz is DZHAZ.

Duško Gojković is the better transliteration of his Serbian name, but in America it would not be acceptable. 

[Big Beat Steve]

2 minutes ago, Dmitry said:

Duško Gojković is the better transliteration of his Serbian name, but in America it would not be acceptable. 

You mean "pronouncable" or "writeable" (without causing major hiccups)? 😉

(Assuming, of course, that the accents are - understandably - omitted anyway for ease of typing ...)

Edited May 5, 2023 by Big Beat Steve

[Niko]

interesting topic, those are habits that sit deeply - I still find it weird to spell "London" as "Londen" (like the Dutch do) but think it's the most normal thing the world to call Roma "Rom" or "Rome"...  regarding Goykovich, the international wikipedias (whom I would trust with that type of thing) seem to have converged to Dušan „Duško“ Gojković with many of them (including English) not even mentioning "Dusko Goykovich" anymore (which I think is misleading if you want to buy the man's records etc... )

[Dmitry]

1 hour ago, Big Beat Steve said:

You mean "pronouncable" or "writeable" (without causing major hiccups)? 😉

(Assuming, of course, that the accents are - understandably - omitted anyway for ease of typing ...)

Pronouncing slavic names comes natural to me. I don't think I've ever written one until this morning. Just popped in my head Gojko Mitić, which, anglicized is probably Goyko Mitich, a Yugoslav movie actor who was in a ton of the Eastern Block Westerns as an American Indian chief Winnetou. Watched those many-many times when I was growing up. 

 

Edited May 5, 2023 by Dmitry

[soulpope]

14 minutes ago, Dmitry said:

Pronouncing slavic names comes natural to me.

Same here ... of course part of my roots ....

[Big Beat Steve]

1 hour ago, Dmitry said:

Pronouncing slavic names comes natural to me. I don't think I've ever written one until this morning. Just popped in my head Gojko Mitić, which, anglicized is probably Goyko Mitic, a Yugoslav movie actor who was in a ton of the Eastern Block Westerns as an American Indian chief Winnetou. Watched those many-many times when I was growing up. 

 

I didn't mean you, of course, but the Anglo (or Anglo-American) writers/journalists/population at large.
Obviously this IS a problem and pronunciation of names in foreign languages does not come naturally to everyone all the time. But WRITING them is a different matter and should not be dictated by pronunciation as long as it is not a case of transliteration.

BTW, Gojko Mitic is very well-known here too, due to exposure to East German Westerns.

Edited May 5, 2023 by Big Beat Steve

[Rooster_Ties]

I’ve never seen Björk‘s name transliterated, though it helps she opted for a monosyllabic mononym.

Certainly simpler for the world than Björk Guðmundsdóttir.  Of course it could be harder (for the world) if Iceland had an entirely different (or more substantially different than it is).

Then there’s someone like Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, who’s name is rendered in Punjabi as صرت فتح علی خان (I think the board software will render this ok, but you can also see his name here) — so there are bigger challenges than dealing with names in print from Cyrillic-based languages.

See also Terumasa Hino: 日野 皓正 — and Rabih Abou-Khalil: ربيع أبو خليل (Arabic).

Edited May 5, 2023 by Rooster_Ties

[Onxidlib]

6 hours ago, Gheorghe said:

Many of the slavonic names were written in kyrrilic letters and the countries that had roman letters like in my case wrote the name in a completly different manner.
It was in this case „Dușco Goicovici” , but I think the common way to write it in all the world became Goykovich.

His real name is Dušan Gojković (in cyrillic: Душко Гојковић). Duško is a diminutive form of Dušan. Me too has a background in ex Yugoslavia - my first language was serbo-croatic (and croatian and serbian are actually / factually [and confirmed by most linguists] the same language - or you could say two dialects - of course nowadays this is not very well received from a lot of folks from those two countries. But this does not change the truth of it.) Apart from that I believe that omitting accents could make a big difference - depending on the language it is translated into. It's not only a question of spelling but of (when spoken) the sound of it. Similar as f.e. a German "Ü" when found in English texts is mostly printed as "U". The sound is quite different.

Back to the man in question. There's still a nice interview from 2010 visible on the Bavarian Brodcast media library (in German only I fear): Dusko Goykovich interview + some playing with piano

[Dmitry]

4 minutes ago, Onxidlib said:

His real name is Dušan Gojković (in cyrillic: Душко Гојковић).

What you wrote in cyrillic is ... Dushko Goykovich. 😀

[Big Beat Steve]

@onxidlib:

The cyrillic spellic you give DOES say "Dusko" and not "Dusan", however.
As for omitting the accents, of course this is primarily a matter of writing convenience (be glad you don't have to write a throng of CZECH names or words ... THERE the accents are all over the place 😄). Omitting them could indeed change the proncunciation but I still think that omitting them in NAMES for convenience (for non-native speakers) is a small price to pay if otherwise the spelling were to remain unaltered in WRITING (i.e "Gojkovic" throughout for the man in question).

But you never know where and how this kind of pronunciation problems might surface ...
There is a moment on the "Boston 1950" CD feat. live recordings by Serge Chaloff where the club announcer points out the upcoming attractions at the Celebrity Club:

"... and also Earl BOSTITCH!"
(clearly audible murmur from another person in the background:) "BOSTICK!"

(befuddled announcer emits lame excuse and corrects himself:) : "BOSTICK"

Imagine this chap would have had to announce Earl Bostic one day and Dusko Gojkovic the next ....

"Man, I'm lost! "
 

Edited May 5, 2023 by Big Beat Steve

[Rooster_Ties]

23 minutes ago, Big Beat Steve said:

There is a moment on the "Boston 1950" CD feat. live recordings by Serge Chaloff where the club announcer points out the upcoming attractions at the Celebrity Club:

"... and also Earl BOSTITCH!"
(clearly audible murmur from another person in the background:) "BOSTICK!"

(befuddled announcer emits lame excuse and corrects himself:) : "BOSTICK"

Oh fuck, that reminds me… back in Kansas City I was at sold-out speaking event (1,000 seat venue, a historic theater downtown), where an academic dean from a local university (not UMKC), COMPLETELY mangled Fareed Zakaria‘s name about 5-6 times trying to introduce him. And I mean MANGLED — over, and over and over again.  Zakaria was the only speaker that night.

80% of the audience surely knew how to pronounce it (I would guess, since it was sold out), but this guy acted like a little kid trying to sound out a long word he’d never seen before — literally repeating Zakaria’s last name immediately twice in a row, wrongly — not that his intro copy had him repeating it, but he just decided to have another go at it, and he fucked it up again. And then again 2-3 more times.

Something like FAIR-reed ZACKerEEah (where the ‘Zack’ rhymed with ‘back’.)

His whole intro was like 2 minutes long, and felt like an eternity.

OMG, I’ll never forget that feeling in the hall, which was palpable.

Edited May 5, 2023 by Rooster_Ties

[Onxidlib]

1 hour ago, Dmitry said:

What you wrote in cyrillic is ... Dushko Goykovich. 😀

Yep correct - I've made a mistake/typo. 😄 It is Душан for Dušan. And this is his real/birth name according Mr. Goykovich himself.

Edited May 5, 2023 by Onxidlib

[Dmitry]

And the prize for the worst pronunciation of a name by a huge swathe of American populace goes to... Iraq.

It's not EYEraq. It's EEraq. I mean, if you invade a country, plunge it into decades of civil strife and trigger the deaths of hundreds of thousands of her citizens, then at least learn how to pronounce the name. 

Close second is EYEran.

 

 

[JSngry]

4 hours ago, sidewinder said:

What a find ! Is there any more of that CBBB/Dizzy concert available?  Looks like it was recorded in a shed/barn and not a studio. So many great players there - the late Tony Coe, Ronnie Scott, Derek Humble, Idrees Sulieman..

No idea, sorry. I saw this clip yesterday on a steaming TV station and was delighted to find it to also be on YT. Wanted to share it here. 

[sidewinder]

5 minutes ago, JSngry said:

No idea, sorry. I saw this clip yesterday on a steaming TV station and was delighted to find it to also be on YT. Wanted to share it here. 

Thanks for posting it, in any case !

[Gheorghe]

20 hours ago, Big Beat Steve said:

Good and interesting point. And a recurrent "problem": The main point in Gojkovic's case was that Serbia also uses Kyrillic lettering whereas Croatia uses Roman letters throughout. So this already might give rise to a difference. Not to mention the fact that the "Serbocroatian" universal language of Yugoslavia is something that probably neither Serbs not Croats nor any of the other ethnic regions down there would want to be reminded of too much anymore today.

AFAIK the universally used spelling in GERMAN was and is "Gojkovic". Which is very close to what the original spelling would be in Croatian (or Roman-letter Serbocroat - give or take a few accents ). But try to get English or French language- countries to adhere to something like that ... Which I guess is why Gojkovic changed or "anglicized" his "artist name" spelling somewhat (or let these changes pass ...) once he had gained an international standing.
"Your" "Goicovici" spelling seems very "romanianized" which is a different case again (there is definitely no "i" at the end of Gojkovic's original name - and no need for any to be there - but the "i" makes it "very Romanian", right? ) Which OTOH might have a certain slant to it that might raise additional questions (remember the Romanian gymnastics athlete Nadia Comaneci whose ACTUAL name was/is Anna Kemenes as she belongs to the Hungarian minority of Romania ... ? )
So as you can see this kind of garbling up proper names in foreign languages is a true can of worms.
In ANY direction.
Even without the problem of transliterating (more or less phonetically) proper names from, say, Kyrillic into Roman spellings. Which can seem quite arbitrary or even funny. I have a Yugoslavian LP here with a selection of jazz groups from Belgrade that were recorded from 1955 to 1963. Guess how "jazz" is "alternately" spelled in the (Roman-letter) cover text and many of the "period" band names? "DZEZ"! Strictly phonetic, and apparently quite in earnest ... But they have a way with foreign names over there anyway - even when NO Kyrillic transliteration is involved ...

Yes, the i at the end, as "Goicovici" is the romanian phonetic way to spell slavonic names. Hungarian names usually were not romanianized as much, but for the majority the hungarian ö and ü was not easy to pronounce, and it is from case to case pronounced as "o" and "u" , or als "io" and "iu" for example in the case of German cities.

So romanian people if they can´t pronounce the ö or the ü they say "Chioln" for "Köln", and "Niuremberg" for "Nürnberg", or "Düsseldorf" sounds like somewhat like "Diusedov"😄

In the 50´s there was a stronger nationalism when it comes to Hungarian surnames. My brother in law would have been "Jozsef" but this was not allowed in the Birth Certificate so in his passport it is "Iosif". And my mother in law´s name , born Ilona was changed into Ileana in her bulletin (romanian common word for "Personalausweis"). 
That would also explain the thing with  Nadia Comaneci. 

About the phonetic spelling of "Jazz" in Eastern Europe.....in România even if it is written als "Jazz" it usually is pronounced with the european a, like in Russia. 
Jazz also had a big following, there were and still are international jazz festivals in Sibiu, concerts în Brașov and of course București, and there was the legendary festival at the Black Sea, in the holiday resort of Costinești but I fear on the litoral (Black Sea) there remained only things like șlagăr festival but I have not been at the Black Sea for decades, in the youth it was annual.