Ever wonder why former Auburn football coach Ralph “Shug” Jordan pronounced his last name the way he did?

Jordan, the Tigers’ head coach from 1951-75, pronounced his surname “JURR-den,” rather than “JORR-den” as most others with that appellation do. Auburn re-named its football stadium Jordan-Hare Stadium in honor of the coach in 1973, and it’s a good test of how big a college football fan someone is if they pronounce the name correctly.

Jordan, who grew up in Selma and played both football and basketball at Auburn before serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, died in 1980 at age 69 after battling leukemia. AL.com recently asked the legendary coach’s son, Ralph Jordan Jr., about why the family name is pronounced the way it is, and he gave a very thorough, detailed explanation.

As it happens, the Jordan family emigrated to the United States from Wales, first settling in Harrison County, W. Va., before Ralph Sr.’s father moved to Selma in 1900. James Harry Jordan was originally a coal miner as many of his contemporaries were, but came South upon taking a job with the Norfolk Southern Railroad (Ralph “Shug” Jordan was born in Selma in 1910).

Ralph Jordan Jr. — a biologist and natural resource manager with the Tennessee Valley Authority for many years — said that he once did in-person genealogical research dating back several generations. He found that the name pronunciation dates to well before the family’s West Virginia days.

“What I pretty quickly understood from looking at headstones and archival information was that it was pronounced ‘JURR-den’ in West Virginia,” Jordan told AL.com. “They didn’t always know how to spell it. You’d go and look at a headstone and it would be spelled J-E-R-D-E-N, or it might even be spelled J-U-R-D-E-N, or sometimes they even used it G-E-R-D-A-N or G-E-R-D-E-N.

“But every time, it was the obvious they wanted it to be pronounced something other than ‘JORR-dun.’”

Jordan said that during one of his trips to West Virginia, a local historian explained to him that “JURR-den” was a Welsh pronunciation dating back to medieval times. Jordan’s ancestors didn’t want to be mistaken for other ethnic groups and nationalities who use the more standard pronunciation.

“He said (Jordan’s Welsh ancestors) all started out probably as serfs on some feudal lord’s kingdom there and ended up off in the Holy Land during the Crusades,” Jordan said he was told. “And when they came back, they were allowed to take names other than whatever they were being called, and so a lot of them took place names, and they all took the same place name for the Jordan River — ‘JURR-den’ River, my dad used to say.

“But the Welsh didn’t want to be confused with the Irish or the French, so they pronounced it ‘JURR-den,’ but it spelled Jordan.”

Ralph Jordan Jr. added that his father was a “dadgum stickler” for others pronouncing his name correctly.

“I mean, my mother, because of the complications that come with somebody trying to write it when you’re registering in a hotel or something, she would say ‘Jordan,’ and my dad would always correct her,” he said. “He worked on my wife, Eve, long and hard to the point she always has said ‘JURR-den.’

“I think my daughter, the lawyer, says ‘JURR-den.’ I don’t know what my son says. I think he says ‘Jordan,’ just to be different, because he’s kind of contrarian, but we’ll forgive him that. But anyway, that’s the history of the name, at least from my research on it.”

So that covers the last name, but how did Ralph Jordan Sr. come to be called “Shug?” That’s pretty straightforward, his son says.

“My understanding was, his buddies nicknamed him ‘Shug’ because he always went down to the farmer’s market there in Selma when they brought the sugar cane in the fall, and he liked to peel and eat sugar cane,” Ralph Jr. said. “And later in life, he said that’s why his teeth were so bad. But that’s kind of where the moniker came from. He never shrugged it off.”

So there you go.