Off topic, but I'm curious about the two dots over the letter u, which is something I've never seen before in French. Living in a German-speaking land, I'm used to seeing the same name written as Emmäus, where the umlaut serves not only to shift the sound of the a vowel but also to imply the emphasis goes there... Now I understand the normal French u-sound is naturally closer to the German ü than any English vowel wi…
It's for correct pronunciation. If there's no two dots on the u letter, french people may pronouce it 'emmo' because an 'a' followed by 'u' is pronounced 'o'. But there's no need because Emmaüs is so well known in France that everybody knows how to say it. You can find other examples in words like 'aigü' (acute) where you have to say the u like german ü.
Re: Emmaüs: Thrift Store Shopping in France
#31"Aigu" does not take a trema. The feminine form "aigüe" does, and the trema is there because otherwise you'd pronounce it "/ɛɡ/" instead of "/ɛ.ɡy/". It does not change the sound of the "u" at all.