Department of Linguistics, Rutgers University
Rm 205A, 18 Seminary Pl, New Brunswick, NJ
adam.jardine@rutgers.edu
I get a lot of questions about my last name. Below are answers to some of them. I'll probably add some more in the future.
I say [ˌd͡ʒɑɹˈdiːn] (jar-DEEN); i.e., it rhymes with "sardine". I'm also fine with an initial fricative instead, i.e. [ˌʒɑɹˈdiːn].
Wrong pronunciations I've gotten are [ˈd͡ʒɑɹdɪn], [ˌd͡ʒɑɹˈda͡ɪn] or [ˈd͡ʒɑɹda͡ɪn], [ˌʒɑɹˈdæn] (or some other approximation of the French word jardin), [xarˈðine] (the Spanish pronunciation), and, perplexingly, [ˌd͡ʒɑɹˈdo͡ɪniː].
No, actually, it's Scottish. It is, however, ultimately derived from the French jardin 'garden'. The name came to the British Isles during the Norman Conquest in the 11th century. Note that 'Jardine' is a bad spelling of the French word.
My great-grandfather emigrated from Scotland through Ellis Island in the 1910s. Interestingly, my grandmother had always insisted that he came to the US illegally by sneaking across the Canadian border, but my father discovered records from Ellis Island that prove otherwise.
No, although he does have a son named Adam!