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Here's something that I found in the Sousa Band Press Books that is perhaps significant. In the April 23, 1899 edition of the New York Journal, John Philip Sousa clarified how to pronounce his last name . . .
So I guess it's not really a "Sue-zuh-phone"; it's a "Sue-sar-phone"!

Interesting....

As opposed to "Sow-za"?

Portuguese pronunciation is more like SO-zuh. Normal English pronunciation is as if it were a French name.

My guess is the R at the end is an "intrusive R", more familiar in speakers from Boston who pronounce Cuba "cuber." I gather it was much more widespread even 50 years ago. While looking this up, I discovered that Sousa would probably have pronounced the city of his birth "Warshington" (DC.) So maybe he can be excused for not knowing how to pronounce his name.

iiipopes wrote:As opposed to "Sow-za"?

Yow-za.

Sounds like what people in Boston would say (they add an "R" to the end of everything).

1929 radio speech and performance of Stars and Stripes Forever
Here's a recorded radio broadcast, where he starts by introducing himself. He has a "non-rhotic" accent, where "panda" and "pander" sound the same.

The way I hear it, he's saying "SUsuh" (not "SUzuh".) I didn't write "SUsa", because you might have taken that final A as a regular vowel, hence SUsaw or something. To him, Sousa rhymes with "juicer", so instead of "uh" it apparently made sense to him to write "ar".

The International Phonetic Alphabet had reached its basic standard form 11 years earlier, so he could have less ambiguously gone with ˈsuːsə