Because of Patrick Stewart in Star Trek, all of America mispronounces a word

The influence of Star Trek is not only noticeable in pop culture. The original Star Trek series showed scientific achievements that only became reality decades later: cell phones, tablets and video telephony, for example.

In Star Trek: The Next Generation, the trend continued in a different way. Patrick Stewart, for example, played an important role in how the word Data is pronounced in the USA.

That was the rule on the set of Star Trek when it came to names

During a panel at the Big Apple Comic-Con 2019, Data actor Brent Spiner answered questions from the audience. He told a story from the early days of The Next Generation. According to this, the entire cast, along with Gene Roddenberry and Rick Berman, sat together to read the script for the first episode. It was the first time that the entire cast was together.

It was also the first time that Brent Spiner’s character Data’s name was spoken. Patrick Stewart’s Picard had the honor of saying the android’s name and did so in his typical English accent. This immediately caused confusion.

The word data, in German, file or data, was previously pronounced with an “a”, just as a German would pronounce it. However, Stewart’s pronunciation was “ei”, i.e. “Deita”. Of course, he was immediately interrupted and a short discussion ensued about how the name should be pronounced.

Gene Roddenberry, visionary as he was, had a simple and elegant solution. Whoever said the name of a being, character or species first should also determine how the name was pronounced. So if Picard said Data first, Stewart should also determine how it was pronounced. This would also make future discussions on this topic obsolete.

You can see Brent Spiner’s amusing account of the events at the Big Apple Comic-Con in this video:

The Star Trek version of Data has become common parlance

Over time, the pronunciation of Data as heard in Star Trek has become established in the USA. Of course, there are still people who believe that this pronunciation is wrong. However, the pronunciation has been implemented in more and more official dictionaries. For example, the Cambridge Dictionary and the English Oxford Dictionary.

There, the Star Trek version of the word is listed as at least a legitimate alternative. And this once again shows the influence that Star Trek as a phenomenon has on our real world.