History Main / HeavyMetalUmlaut

* In Oulunkylä, a suburb of Helsinki, it is sometimes possible to see a car that looks very much like a police car. Only instead of Poliisi (police) it says Rosvå. Not quite purely decorative, however, as å is pronounced the same as o, only longer, so it almost sounds like ''rosvo'', the Finnish word for thief.

* ''WebComic/BadMachinery'' used an umlauted band, Lünk, in a strip discussing a rocker vs. mod war. [[http://scarygoround.com/?date=20140603 (Link)]]

[[folder:Wëb Örïgïnäl]]

* One ''WebAnimation/HomestarRunner'' Halloween cartoon had, as a ShoutOut to Music/MotleyCrue, Homestar selling a concoction labeled "Witch's Brüe".

* The ''WesternAnimation/FairlyOddParents'' episode "Where is the Wand?", features a Bavarian folk band (?!?) in ''lederhosen'' called "Der Rolling Hösen". [[note]]("Der" is wrong too, technically it would be "Die". [[WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons But that might confuse a non-German.]])[[/note]]
* ''[[WebAnimation/HanazukiFullOfTreasures Han̈azüki: Full of Treasures]]'' is stylized this way on its logo, with the "n̈" and "ü" vaguely resembling a frowny and smiley face, fitting the show's theme about moods.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': In the "Treehouse Of Horror V" segment "Nightmare Cafeteria", the "OKTOBERFEST" sign has umlauts over the "K" and one of the "T"s.

* Zig-zagged by Italian rock band [[{{Music/Maneskin}} Måneskin]], winners of the Recap/EurovisionSongContest2021. Played straight in that they chose a name with a diacritic to look badass, justified because it is the [[ForeignLanguageTitle Danish word]] for Moonshine (the bass player is half Danish).

* The ''lack'' of this trope in Creator/{{Atlus}}' localized versions of the first two ''VideoGame/SuperRobotWarsOriginalGeneration'' games led to some serious FanWank over the presumed [[SpellMyNameWithAnS "correct" spellings]] of certain characters' names which continues to this very day. The biggest one being over Sänger Zonvolt, who due to the way Japanese phonetics works, has his name pronounced as "Ze-n-ga-ru" in games that feature voice acting, thus resulting in a number of fans who insist that his name is "Zengar" or some variant thereof.

* The Spanish band Mägo de Oz - [[CatchPhrase ¡Cabroneeeees!]]

* Music/NanowarOfSteel does this with the titles of the songs "Intrue" and "Outrue" ("ue" being a way to represent the German "ü"). It's also a pun on how they play only "true metal" [[CatchPhrase (of steel!)]].

* In the "WesternAnimation/TreehouseOfHorror V" episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', the "OKTOBERFEST" sign has umlauts over the "K" and one of the "T"s.

* ''[[WesternAnimation/HanazukiFullOfTreasures Han̈azüki: Full of Treasures]]'' is stylized this way on its logo.

* Music/ARKane's SpiritualSuccessor group Jübl, which has [[NoPronunciationGuide no official pronunciation]].

* ''Film/MontyPythonAndTheHolyGrail'' takes this UpToEleven with the Swedish subtitles under the opening credits.

* In ''Literature/{{Zodiac}}'', a local metal band is mentioned, and off-handedly dismissed by a metal fan as a "two-umlaut band".

Not to be confused with other uses of diaereses (also called trema), in which diacritic marks identical to umlauts can appear in some English words. A diaeresis was traditionally used in vowel pairings where the second vowel is pronounced in a separate syllable, hence they are found in archaic spellings of words such as coöperate, preëmptive or Zodiäc. This usage is largely obsolete, though it is still part of the house style of ''Magazine/TheNewYorker'' magazine and MIT Technology Review, but survives in words like naïve which are borrowed from languages which do use diaereses to varying degrees. In modern English, umlaut is used in one special case, over "e" at the end of the word, where it denotes a pronounced "e" instead of silent "e", such as the Brontë siblings.

Gratuitous umlauts usually cause unnecessary embarrassment amongst native speakers of those languages whose orthography ''does'' use umlauts. An umlaut usually denotes the vowel is pronounced as frontal. Ä denotes a frontal a, like "cat", while A without umlauts is the back vowel, like "car". Likewise, Ö denotes a frontal o phoneme [usually denoted in English as ''ir'' or ''ur'' ], not unlike "sir", while O without umlaut is back vowel O, like "dog". Languages which use umlaut vowel shift are German, Swedish, Finnish, Skolt Sami, Karelian, Estonian, Hungarian (which also has long umlauts), Luxembourgish, North Frisian, Saterlandic, Emiliano-Romagnolo, Rotuman, Slovak, Azerbaijani, Turkish, Tatar, and Turkmen. A lesser example is Spanish, where they have only "Ü"[[note]]Which is more used to indicate that the "u" has two functions in a word, namely to sound like the "w" in "weigh" and to make a preceding g hard (like the g in "goat" rather than the J in "Juan"). An example is ''pingüino'' (penguin).[[/note]] (Portuguese used to have it too before language reforms). Often Ä and Ö are treated as completely separate letters from A and O, appearing at the end of the alphabet beyond Z.

Gratuitous umlauts usually cause unnecessary embarrassment amongst native speakers of those languages whose orthography ''does'' use umlauts. An umlaut usually denotes the vowel is pronounced as frontal. Ä denotes a frontal a, like "cat", while A without umlauts is the back vowel, like "car". Likewise, Ö denotes a frontal o phoneme [usually denoted in English as ''ir'' or ''ur'' ], not unlike "sir", while O without umlaut is back vowel O, like "dog". Languages which use umlaut vowel shift are German, Swedish, Finnish, Skolt Sami, Karelian, Estonian, Hungarian (which also has long umlauts), Luxembourgish, French, North Frisian, Saterlandic, Emiliano-Romagnolo, Rotuman, Slovak, Azerbaijani, Turkish, Tatar, and Turkmen. A lesser example is Spanish, where they have only "Ü"[[note]]Which is more used to indicate that the "u" has two functions in a word, namely to sound like the "w" in "weigh" and to make a preceding g hard (like the g in "goat" rather than the J in "Juan"). An example is ''pingüino'' (penguin).[[/note]] (Portuguese used to have it too before language reforms). Often Ä and Ö are treated as completely separate letters from A and O, appearing at the end of the alphabet beyond Z.

* Spümcø, the animation studio that originally produced ''WesternAnimation/TheRenAndStimpyShow''.
** Speaking of Ren, his last name is "Hoëk" (pronounced "HO-ek").

* Averted by Finnish heavy metal band ''Teräsbetoni'' where the umlaut is NOT gratuitous. The name is perfectly good Finnish, and means "reinforced concrete".

* The Creator/DCComics universe used to have a city called Blüdhaven, which was to Gotham City as New Jersey is to New York and was so [[DarkAgeOfSupernames dark and corrupt]] it grew an ümlaut. It mainly appeared in ''ComicBook/{{Nightwing}}''[[note]]Dick Grayson was on the police force for a while.[[/note]], ''ComicBook/{{Robin| Series}}'' and ''ComicBook/{{Batgirl| 2000}}'', but was eventually destroyed during the ''ComicBook/InfiniteCrisis'' crossover event. At least one CosmicRetcon later, it returned in ''Comicbook/NightwingRebirth'', in which Nightwing explains to out-of-towners that it is in fact "''Blewd''-haven", not "Blood-haven".

[[folder:FänFïctïön]]
* The ''Fanfic/MyImmortal'' {{Parody}} fic ''[[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/9118183/1/My-Mëtäl My Mëtäl,]]'' or simply ''[[http://monicagilbey-bieber.deviantart.com/gallery/41426280 My Metal,]]'' also parodies this trope mercilessly, along with MetalHead stereotypes. The [[Creator/MonicaGilbeyBieber author]] even made it as part of the rules for the fic's official DrinkingGame to take a shot for every umlaut in the fanfic.

[[folder:Nëwspäpër Cömïcs]]
* ''ComicStrip/BloomCounty''. Deathtöngue. "A bird on the bass, a tongue - what a face! At best, the music can best be described as lame..."
[[/folder]]