I'm so confused right now, and so is the rest of Twitter. Apparently, there's some tremendous disagreement—spearheaded by Run the Jewels rapper and producer El-P—regarding whether the adorable, proletarian bear family of children's book and TV cartoon fame are:
The Berenstein Bears
OR
The Berenstain Bears
Of course, I'd assumed that they were the Berenstein Bears all this time, since '-stein' is a breezy, believable surname suffix for a lineage of adorable anthropomorphic bears! As a kid, and today, I've always pronounced it BEAR-EN-STEEN.
But the books say "Berenstain"! As do the cartoon production credits!
![](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 203 115"%3E%3C/svg%3E)
BEAR-EN-STAIN.
— el-p (@therealelp) August 6, 2015
Note that the series co-authors are Stan, Jan, and Mike Berenstain—a nuclear family of humans, not bears. It would be understandable, then, for me to regard the co-authors as the Berenstain family while regarding the bear family as the Berenstein Bears. In fact, it's easier that way.
Fuck official sources and surnames. Let's just put it to a vote.