To think people should just pronounce her name the way she has asked them to?

My son has a name that ends in tin and a lot of people say ton instead. I feel like it’s a certain type
of person. I have a name that can be spelt a million different ways and it really annoys me in emails when they reply with the incorrect spelling. I feel it’s like a power trip or something.

She can call it bullying and xenophobic if she likes. It’s up to her. I advocate a more measured approach.

But it's her name!!!!

Eva like never or Eva like beaver or Eva like raver? None of which are hard to say.

In her shoes I would start pronouncing everyone else’s name wrong…. So David would be DAV… ED.
Oscar …. ‘Oh’ - scar…. Etc!

but more seriously….. it amounts to bullying or discrimination…. Sure if she had a really hard name to pronounce, but Eva being pronounced as Ava isn’t that hard!!

It’s rude to deliberately mis pronounce a name

my name is often completely mispronounced (a different name but people think it’s the same name) but I’m not bothered by this most people get it right

some times people are used to a name being pronounced in a particular way and just revert back to that but they should try to remember

Brava, OP, for standing up for what is right.

How would you feel if your name was persistently pronounced “Tass” instead of Tess?

My reception child, just turned 5 has 2 Evie’s in her class.

one is Eh-vie, the other Ee-vie.

These 5 year olds manage to get both right.

HR is a bit of a drastic measure but I do think people should try to get her name right, it is her name after all. Not your situation to police though. Speak your mind and leave it there.

I think YANBU. It’s basic respect to try and pronounce people’s names properly. We all make mistakes and might slip up if it’s unfamiliar, so no shame there. Equally no shame if she corrects it. Must be annoying for her that people keep getting it wrong.

I omit the h sound. I say BAY-to-ven as do most people I know. I'm American.

I'd say BAIT-ho-ven. Never heard anyone omit the h sound

How rude of your colleagues.
And how depressing, too.
My DS is 13. He was telling me how much he enjoyed a geography lesson in school in which they learnt about stereotypes, and he talked to me about what he'd learnt about how easy it is to stereotype other people from different countries or cultures to our own, and how wrong this is, and why it's wrong, and how all of us need to consciously work against stereotyping others, and why it's important. He chatted to me all about this whilst I was cooking dinner. It was a pleasure to listen to him because......he got it. He completely and utterly 100% got it.
What a shame your adult colleagues have less insight than a 13 year old.

@Slimtoddy why did you give your son a name that you couldn't pronounce?

Good point and based on my experience with my son who has dyslexia and an auditory processing disorder as well, not being able to hear and reproduce certain sounds is a real problem for some.

However, that does not seem to be the issue in OP's workplace. As previous posters have pointed out, If these men can say the English word "ever" especially if they have a non-rhotic accent, then they can say the name.

It's probably different now with the Internet, but I heard that a lot of Chinese people would seek a 'western' name by finding an English word, but without knowing whether it was commonly used as a person's name or not - so you might equally end up with e.g. Jane (very standard name), Fanny (yes, a name, but...), Love (unusual but sounds quite nice as a name) or Envelope (ridiculous) - unless they thought it rhymed with Penelope!!

I'd be just the same the other way around, if I had to find a Chinese word that worked as a name. I'd be utterly clueless.

Sorry, that was my error - you're correct: I put the stress on the wrong syllable when trying to approximate the 'standard' British pronunciation!

I have always checked to she how people say their name/what they want to be called and tried very hard to get it right
I judge others that don't.
I judge them harder if they don't make an effort cos someone is "foreign".
I had a colleague called Afia. 4 letters, said as it looks. Aff e yah. Not hard, not even out of the ordinary. It turned into little Britain " say it again".

I mentioned earlier that some people struggle with pronunciation of words. I googled to provide insight - Phonological dyslexia affects the language side of dyslexia. People with this type of dyslexia can have trouble with sounding words out aloud, breaking up words into individual sounds, not knowing their left from their right, reading stories and poems out aloud and singing.

As previously mentioned this was the explanation a doctor gave me for being unable to pronounce my DS's name. Some people are not being awkward.

This drives me mad. My name isn’t standard English and I correct people every time, but they immediately repeat it incorrectly. 🤦🏼‍♀️

I always ask students how to pronounce their name and practise it until I get it right. I have an Eva (ee-va) and know an Eva (eh-fah, not English). It’s not difficult and you were right to call them out.

@AdultHumanFemaleOne same here. We had quite a few Chinese children at our school and they all had British names. The man who ran the takeaway was called Billy although he had a Chinese name as well.

We deal with a lot of suppliers from China at work, and all the email contacts have very traditional British sounding names with their traditional Chinese surnames.

When I was a student my best friend was a girl from Hong Kong. She and all of her family had Chinese and English names. She told me it was common practice for this to happen.

I've visited China several times, and many younger Chinese people in the cities give themselves Western names. I imagine that within their families they're called their Chinese name, but they will introduce themselves as Johnny or Bobby.
I didn't look into the reason behind it. It might just be fashionable. But in this country I'd imagine that it's to fit in, because many Chinese names rely on the really difficult tonal language for them to work.

Of all the languages in the world, Chinese has to be the most difficult for the average westerner to pronounce. Just saying someone's name at the wrong pitch could turn it from the equivalent of 'Jane' into something like 'cabbage' (or very much worse).

While I agree that they should pronounce her name as she prefers, I do think it's unreasonable to report a conversation held in the pub, outside of work hours, to HR. People are allowed to vent about things they find irritating, in private, without being accused of micro aggressions or bullying!

If you have a name that can be pronounced more than one way, I do think you kind of have to accept people getting it wrong. Esp if the way you say your name is not the norm for the country you are in! It's not that big a deal imo. It's annoying that they are being twatty about it, but to me, it's a minor irritation.