ABSTRACT
No one in Hungary can pronounce Kierkegaard’s name properly, except those few who speak Danish; thus Kierkegaard remains phonetically unattainable for scholars, writers, and students, who call him KEER-KA-GARD, even with a heavy “d” at the end. The reluctance to learn the proper pronounciation may originate from its closeness to the Hungarian kergekór; with the change of only two consonants, the word means a dangerous disease that sheep can transmit to humans, which ends with one loosing one’s mind and “whirling around.” Writers like to play on the closeness of the sound of the words.1 Sometimes, this feature surfaces even in everyday conversations as well.
