As soon as Gerry Turner was announced as ABC’s first ever Golden Bachelor, everyone from diehard fans to Bachelor Nation holdouts thought, “A guy named Jerry is the new senior Bachelor!” To be honest, they weren’t wrong. Typically—or always, as far as I’m concerned—Gerry is pronounced “Jerry” with a soft “G.” Even a quick, unofficial Google search about how to pronounce Gerry brings up numerous sites that indicate Gerry is pronounced “Jerry” and not “Gary.”
But no, not this time. Gerry Turner, the 72-year-old grandfather and father from Indiana, indeed pronounces his name with a hard “G.” In fact, ABC Publicity, knowing that it would trip up journalists and fans alike, indicated the following in their initial press release announcing Turner as their inaugural Golden Bachelor:
Still, it was something that I was curious about, so when I joined Gerry and several of the women on their first group date of the season (more on that next week after it airs on Thursday), he did his best to explain.
“I don’t know if this is the true story…” he starts off, adding that he was so young when first heard it that if his family were to get away with telling him a lie, this was the time to do it. “There are a lot of Irish families in my history, and they told me that G-E-R-R-Y was the Irish way of spelling Gary.”
Now, my cursory Google search could not confirm or deny this. But as Gerry himself says, “It becomes memorable!” He’s not wrong there. Still, if you’re a stickler for pronunciation and feel the need to scratch an itch every time you see “Gerry” on your screen, I get it. (Or maybe that’s just me.)
