Published in 1890.
Would you believe there really is a Berghotel Schwarenbach in the Swiss Alps? Built in 1742. And that Guy de Maupassant had stayed there. In fact, all the locations mentioned in the story are real!
Which you would think would make name pronunciation real easy, just find examples of real people saying the real names. Alas, as much as people like to share videos about these places, THEY NEVER SAY THE NAMES! They just show panoramic views of the place, typically set to some obnoxiously loud music, and they never say the name. So, in fact, I had very little guidance on pronunciations, despite these being real place names. Mostly I was forced to listen to google translate, which isn't great. Fortunately German is a language I did learn in school, from actual Germans, so hopefully I did alright with the German names at least. Although I learned it from German Germans, not Swiss Germans (well, I had one teacher who was Austrian, but still not Swiss) so the pronunciations might not be quite right from a Swiss perspective, but at least it's German of some form or another.
Except, rather curiously, the name Loëche, which appears to correspond to the present day name of Leukerbad. The name Loëche was in use 100+ years ago, although seemingly not so much today? Except you find the French name for it as Loèche-les-Bains, so it remains in the French, but obviously gets a very different pronunciation than what it would as a German word. Given how incredibly confused it all is, I had no idea what kind of pronunciation to use for it. But since it looks like a German word (due to the umlaut, you see...), I gave it my best attempt a German pronunciation. Whether or not they would have done that in 1890 I cannot even begin to guess. *sigh*
Jean Hauser - for the life of me, I could not tell from the text whether Jean was the matriarch of the family or the patriarch. It's really confusing. Given the time period being written in and the way the name is used, you'd expect it to be the patriarch, but there are enough suggestions in the text that it is the matriarch that you really have to scratch you head and wonder what is going on. It matters for purposes of pronunciation - as a male name I would give it the sound more like John, but for a woman more like Gene. And it turns out Jean can be a form of Jane as well. What a name! Authors, if you are going to use such gender-neutral names, unless it is a specific plot point for it to be ambiguous, please make it clear exceedingly whether the character of that name is male or female.
Gawd, name selection by authors really is the bane of narrators. It's no problem if you are just reading it for yourself, you can fancy whatever pronunciation you like in your own mind, but a narrator has to pick something. Since authors NEVER give any hints as the pronunciations they have in mind, it can become painfully difficult in many cases to know what to do. Ugh.
crupper: a strap buckled
