Somebody called this a.m and mentioned knowing Gen. NAY-land while they both served in Calcutta in the 1940s. No one corrected him, but well try to set the record straight.
That gives us pause to mention that the name is actually Gen. KNEE-land. So is the name of the four-lane boulevard behind the south end of Neyland Stadium.
How do we know that?
Its easy. The name is thusly pronounced according to two family experts, Mrs. Neyland, Ada Fitch Neyland formally, but Peggy to her closest friends, and son, Bob, as hes shared with any number of people across the years.
To emphasize her point to UTs Charles Brakebill, the development guru who worked with her on the Neyland Scholarship program back in the early 1960s, Mrs. Neyland heard him say the family name as NAY-land and let him in on a little secret.
She stood on one leg, patted her knee, and said its KNEE-land, like my knee. That apparently settled that, at least for Brakebill.
Young Bob Neyland also had an opinion expressed in a letter to the Tennessean, Nashvilles morning newspaper. It won a three-star designation from the newspapers editorial board.
Our family has always pronounced our name Neyland, he wrote. My father was a very private person, despite a very public position. He had a fairly small circle of close friends, who knew the correct pronunciation. Newspaper and radio journalists called him Nay-land.
John Ward, ever mindful of these things, said it more succinctly: Neyland told me it was KNEE-land.
Whichever person you might believe, it is still KNEE-land.
And dont you forget it.