Slightly changing focus here, let me ask all of you how you pronounce 'cooper' and 'hooper'. (As is well known, a cooper makes barrels, or, more specifically, he fashions the staves and heads and assembles them into a barrel, cask, hogshead, bucket, soe, etc. with hoops which are made (or used to be) by a hooper from lath.)

In Maryland, both of these words, as well as 'hoop', are pronounced by older people, or by people named Cooper or Hooper, with the 'oo' the same as in 'foot', not as in 'soon', as is the case elsewhere in the U.S. so far as I know, and by younger people.