I could have sworn it was Berenstein but I went and looked, nope. It's Berenstain.

Of course, I have no adult children, these are mine. ;)

I looked at some copies on ebay and only saw Berenstain. I thought it looked weird too and should be Berenstein, but I guess not.

These are sweet books, very nice for children. The one I remember reading to my kids was The B Bears and the Babysitter.

PS I looked up Jan and Stan Berenstain on Wikipedia and see no sign of the --stein spelling. If Stan's family came here as immigrants, the spelling might have been changed.

We always pronounced it Berestain, so that spelling makes sense to me. What's the deal? Is someone trying to say the authors are Jewish and attempting to hide it? That would be ridiculous.

My kids liked this series. I have no recollection of the name being one way or the other, but Texas Gem seems to have the definitive answer. It is an unusual spelling, so it's easy enough to glace at it and miss it.

Must be a slow day for news?

I could have sworn it was Berenstein too. Just goes to show how flimsy human memory can be.

Did you ever watch the 1995 TV series Nowhere Man? (without ruining the entire plot in the series, it was about a man who suddenly lost his identity and whose entire life memories were brought into question)

Well, "beren" is Dutch for "bears", but "stain" doesn't mean anything. Stein in German means "stone", but is "steen" in Dutch. Somewhere along the way, whether in Europe or through immigration, the name got muddled.

I never heard them called "stein". If it wasn't said "stain" it drifted more to "steen" or "sten (stehn)" in sound.

Perhaps there was an overzealous typesetter to screwed up some early printings? Otherwise, I think it's a matter of sloppy readers. ;)

This 'controversy' is just a trivial debate, like the "white dress/blue dress" one of a few months back. But it's about what one thinks they remember, rather than what one thinks they are seeing. On one side, thousands of people (me, among them) who read those books to their kids in the 80's/90's, swear the name was spelled BerenSTEIN. Yet it seems that no proof can be found that they were ever anything but BerenSTAIN. I'm away visiting my DD right now, and am actually waiting for DH to check our old bookshelves to confirm the spelling for me, as I swear they were the Berenstein Bears, lol! http://mandelaeffect.com/berenstein-or-berenstain-bears

Well I, too, thought it was Berenstein. Both girls loved those books, I enjoyed them also.

It's Stan and Jan Berenstain. I don't get how there is a controversy.

Probably because most people mispronounced their name.

Man we loved these books. I just drug a stack out, that I will now read all by myself.

Maybe we think it should be Berenstein because that looks right.

dani, the 'controversy' isn't really one at all, as all evidence proves that Jan and Stan indeed used their own surname Berenstain for their books, which were NEVER called the Berenstein Bears. It's just a strange thing that tens of thousands of people somehow read the word wrong, just like all the people who saw that dress as white and gold, lol!

We always pronounced it Berenstain, so I'm sure that was on the books we had. I remember that when my son (now 31) started talking, he called them Stain-Berenstain, because all the syllables confused him. He also had a belly-belly-butnon-butnon. :)

ETA, my 28 yr old daughter checked our books--it's spelled Berenstain.

My favorite is the alternate universe hypothesis. :) fun to think about.

I thought it was "stein" instead of "stain" too. But has been many years since we had those books. I'll have to ask my daughter and see what she remembers.

chiming in here as well, remembering the book as Bearstein Bears, wudda/cudda sworn that was what they were! Grands are now 24 and 26...wonder if they still have any of the books. DH and I bought every one!

Sign my name to the above two posts. :)