“It’s KOOO-PER... there is no “Southern” really for that name.”
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As a North Carolinian, yeah, there kinda sorta is.
Some here would pronounce his name that approaches “Queue-per”. Not all the way there, but noticeably different from COO-per.
And I don’t even know what our soon-to-be-not Governorprefers.
Maybe Down East coastal types— what, “ohkrahcohke”
Q-per... maybe they say it like that. mtn NC and VA do not- and definitely not Piedmont. Get around all of those places, and being Southern would listen and hear that.
So, maybe that small demographic would say it that way. Cooper is from Nashville, NC (not down east, and definitely in the middle of tobacco road. his daddy a demonrat machine operative of Jim Hunt’s- another one of those). Oh well— there’s a lot Jesse Helms fans still in NC and they do not like cooooper Qper. Such crooks operating out of the Liquor Boards and Big Tobacco. Or as a friend/wag yaks, saying “there is Methodism to their madness, and the Trinity of the Dukes”.
Learned a new accent today.
It’s like people who pronounce “roof” as “rough”. It’s probably a regional/class dialect thing
The one that confuses me is the name “Koch”, where some folks pronounce it “Cook”, and others “Cotch”. WaddaIno?