AIBU for pronouncing the name Brooke as BrOOKe rather than Bruck

yes it is but there’s a lot of commonality between understanding how the accents work differently in this way and how they work differently in other similar ways. Once you understand that the same words can be pronounced differently in one example, it’s easy to understand how that might work on a different scale.

Here is me saying ‘Luke took a look in his cook book before jumping over the brook in the woods with a hook’. Trigger warning, it might blow some minds. This is in a very generic Scottish middle class accent.

https://voca.ro/16lZlnlUCv7l

Edit: didn’t mean to quote that post!

doodleschnoodle · Today 12:26

MN and its typical southern England-centric ‘This is how things are spoken’ rhetoric.

A lot of you are wrong. Look up rhotic and non-rhotic accents, I beg you.

I thought rhoticity was purely about the pronunciation of the letter 'r'. I don't think it has anything to with how 'oo' is pronounced. I'm pretty sure the vast majority of northern England has non-rhotic accents.

Ah, you haven't done anything wrong... but I really feel for her.

My in-laws are from the North East and I hate how they say my name. It sounds so different to my pronunciation so it sounds like they are calling me something that's just not my name, and I just really dislike how it sounds (love the accent in general, just not what it does to my name).

I'll never tell them because I wouldn't want to offend anyone, but I do cringe every time they say my name. It was definitely a big factor when we chose names for our DC! Lots of names were also vetoed because of how they sound in accent too though... maybe her parents should have thought more about pronunciation when they named her 🤷‍♀️.

Exactly. You wouldn't pronounce it as in Yuck, as said in a southern person's accent, which is what a lot of people are assuming on this thread. I think the poster meant Brooke pronounced to rhyme with look, in most accents. I do know people who say loook, boook etc (Manchester and Cheshire) but I'm pretty sure they wouldn't say Brooooke, either because it's not as if there aren't quite a lot of people with that name and it's not as if people will never have heard it said before. And I know Mr and Mrs Brookes don't call themselves Brooookes here in south Cumbria.

The difference with Niamh = Neev etc is that there isn't an accent that would legitimately pronounce it how it's spelt. It would just be ignorance.

OP is pronouncing Brooke how everyone else with her accent would say it. There are little Brookes running around in the northeast who all pronounce it the same way as the OP. It's a regional difference, not ignorance.
If you knew a Brooke from the northeast would you make sure you pronounced it Brooooke with the long oo even though that isn't what you would usually say for book etc?

OK, but the question is about pronouncing a persons name*, which is a different matter from the pronunciation of ordinary, everyday words in whatever local accent.

Refusing to pronounce a name the way you’ve been told is the way the person likes it, and the way everybody else does, is just plain bad manners - and deliberate bad manners at that.

I have a geordie Auntie. Her name is pronounced Morr-een (to rhyme with Coleen). I thought it was a nice unique name.

I was an adult before I realised her name was Maureen. 😀

It has been explained now. Bruck to rhyme with fuck in a Yorkshire accent. (Or book, took, hook to probably most people)

It’s just the extra mental load

and for some people it’s really hard - I find maths easy that others struggle with but names and sounds … I need all the help I can get and that includes sensible spellings

Like the name Mhairi, pronounced Vari.

There are two ways to pronounce the oo sound, that’s where the problem is.

No, there at least three.

OMG. These kinds of threads drive me dotty! It's as though nobody in the UK has ever heard accents from any other part of the UK except the one they live in!

To sum up:

OP pronounces 'Brooke' to rhyme with Luke.
People who are not Geordies (or from certain other parts of the NE or maybe also Scotland?) pronounce Brooke with a short 'oo' as in 'look'. This sound doesn't exist in some NE or maybe Scottish accents. OP transcribed this sound as 'uck' because that's how you'd pronounce 'uck' in much of the North of England.

Absolutely nobody would pronounce 'Brooke' as 'Bruck' would be pronounced in Southern England.

Book is not pronounced as (how you think of) Buck.

Buck is being pronounced as (how you think of ) Book.

There are two ways to pronounce the oo sound, that’s where the problem is. Some
northern English accents pronounce it a lot longer then others further south, so to them it probably does sound like people from further south are saying bruck, but actually there is a slight difference between the u and oo sounds. I sympathise with the girl but actually it is an issue she will have to deal with - both of my daughters have names which are harder to pronounce correctly where we now live. I just pronounce them how they should be pronounced but we don’t get too hung up if people say them differently.

I cant make any sense of how some of these words are sounded.

Just call her Brick.

Your second time is how some people in England pronounce it, but it seems that the OP's family are from the North, but south of her, so probably Yorkshire and they don't pronounce it like that.
As others have already said, for lots of us Northerners, look, cook, luck, tuck, hook, suck etc. rhyme. Only words which most English accents pronounce with a longer 'oo' sound, such as food, mood, boot don't rhyme, because we also use the longer sound.

I have no idea how I sound, I’ve read it out loud and in my head so many times everything now sounds weird but I have a very mixed accent

https://youtube.com/shorts/UM21lcn-C24?si=sdVJ9mxwpvxkEPYW

Right but how they tell you to might be different in their accent to yours.

My sisters name is Katie. In our Yorkshire accent it's more like Keey-eh, she would be laughed at if she tried to make southern people pronounce Katie that way. She's perfectly happy to answer to Kay-tee even though they sound quite different.

I would say bruck, the same as I would say for brook

brewk sounds like I imagine someone from Liverpool pronouncing it and I don’t know how else to say it!
buck and book sound very similar when I say them but look and luck sound slightly different

I have a bad habit of saying haf past instead of half

I think you should pronounce someones name how they telll you to.
I have a very unusual name and it winds me up when people get it wrong.

Saying that, i ain't calling nobody Creg.

Are you saying “oo” like ( to use Read, write inc’s phonetics) “ poo at the zoo” or “ look at a book”?
I’m a southerner living in Yorkshire, and we can get a bit hung up on this sound… but, I would ( and do for a child with that name) use the “look at a book” version! 😊

That isn't the rule. Accents make everyone pronounce names slightly differently. I can't roll my Rs, it would be ridiculous of someone with a name from an accent that does roll their Rs to expect me to pronounce their name the exact same way as they do.

If you met an American Graham would you be happy calling him Gram?

I'm not sure because it's an accent but you could easily say "Bruck" I'm guessing

If I named my son Hugo, my friends in Yorkshire would pronounce it differently from my family in London, but I wouldn't expect them to change an accent and I can't decide whether what you're proposing is different

Yes mine! East Lancs. I am totally mystified by this third way that’s not brick or brewk. And I hear all different accents I’m not stuck in a Lancastrian bubble.