Pronouncing baby's name wrong

E acute in French is not really ay although British with bad French accents might render it thus.

Ecouter is not pronounced ay cootay nor Etaples ay taple.

I wouldn't insist, but if I first saw the name written down I'd pronounce it like the French Jean, have to be corrected, wonder silently why they hadn't gone for Gene...

Deirdre is an Irish name, pronounced Derdreh. It is one of many foreign names, mispronounced in English.

Louis as in Saint Louis in America is indeed pronounced in the same way as Lewis.

There were many French brands pronounced as they would be in English during the 1970's and 1980's (when we didn't have the internet to check the correct pronounciation. The classic is of course, Nestles Milky bar (prounounced Nestels), Not Nestlé, nestleh.

The other one that amuses me was when the car company Hyundai, attempted to correct the pronouciation from Hi Un Die to hiun dai (no idea how to show the change in pronounciation) and then reverted to Hi Un Die.

I might have been a hick back in the day and of course know how to properly pronounce all French words now but in my teens, the perfume was called Annay Annay and when you asked at the perfume counter, everyone knew what you meant!

If someone named their child Jean (to sound like the name for demins) would you insist on calling them the French name for John??

see pronouncenames.com. Amelie pronounced the French way is so much prettier

Elodie is a bit like Ay-Lo-DEE.

On Élodie/ Melody - they rhyme if you pronounce the ‘o’ sound distinctly. Melody is quite widely pronounced more like ‘melluh-dee’, however.

My DDs got a friend who called her little boy Louis....Oh that's gorgeous, I said, I love "loo-eee", she looked at me in horror and said "it's pronounced Lewis". I despair. Why saddle a child with a name that everyone is going to say wrong for its entire life hmm

He could move to New Orleans - Louis Armstrong seemed to manage with everyone else calling him 'Loo-Eee' when he and others from the area pronounce it 'Lewis'.

Lol
We used to pronounce nougat as nugget

They are in for a lifetime of putting people 'right' . That is up to them.

No, they are in for a few years of it while the child is small. Then it's over to her for the rest of her life. It's the child's name, not the parents'.

I speak French and Elodie rhymes with melody so I was confused by that too. Unless melody is not being pronounced Mel o dee.

*know! Sodding phone!

I have an Amélie - I might be wrong but I say a-may-lie (not quite May but don't no how to write it - somewhere between May and meh!) and never a-muh-lie which is how most people who don't call her Emily by mistake pronounce it :)

it is people of a certain age who will say Annay, because of the perfume advert. I knew an An-ay-is at school, so it was very confusing to hear the advert.
IT is just one of those names. They are in for a lifetime of putting people 'right' . That is up to them.

My daughter was at school with a girl called Chryseis pronounced Sherice.

I have no patience with the idea that parents can call their child anything they like and the rest of the world is expected to just fall in and accept their idea of how it should be spelled/pronounced. Using a non-standard spelling/pronunciation is going to cause endless hassle and confusion, for your own child more than anyone else. Why would you do that?

Whilst I agree that it is there child you cannot say you are right just because you are their parent. That's not how names work otherwise you could call your child Hedgehog and say its pronounced Bill. A little extreme in my example but still basically the same concept. Names can be and are pronounced in many ways but you cannot just decide that you like the look of one name and make up a pronunciation that you like. Poor thing will spend years correcting people and will no doubt be calling herself Ana before she is a teen.

On a separate note as a teacher I have never met or taught an Elodie which was not pronounced like melody even a little French girl we had pronounced it el-oh-dee, how should it be pronounced?

That was to Mike ^^

They can pronounce it grockel if they like.

Everyone outside the family will pronounce it correctly with the ‘eece’ ending and she will spend her lifetime correcting them. If they want to call her Annay then it would be sensible to change the spelling.

Oh and those saying that the 80s advert said 'annay annay' - it's not uncommon to market a foreign product but alter the pronunciation of its name to make it easier for non-speakers of the original language.

Have I fallen down a wormhole?! I swear I have read this exact thread before, down to the replies and everything. I'm not sure whether there's a glitch in the matrix or it's just a popular thread topic but I am very confused

I've watched the video and get that Ann-ay is just wrong. But all I hear is 'An ace' - all the other ways of writing it don't make any sense to me.

Of course you can pronounce it how you like. Anyone can pronounce their child's name however they like. But the name Anaïs is correctly pronounced ann ah eess. The two dots over the i are specifically there to indicate that you pronounce the 'a' and the 'i' as separate vowel sounds - i.e. 'ah' and 'ee'. So what's the point in putting the two dots there but not using them?

If they want to say it as Annay, let them.
A colleague has a DD named Elodie, and they say it to rhyme with Melody. Their child...
Similarly the countless Amelies pronounced Ammerly in this country.

I work with a lovely French girl named Anais, she pronounces it An-ey-iss. Not 'eye'

They're not pronouncing her name wrong - they picked it!
They just haven't spelt it the way you expect for how it's said.

I might at some point have a conversation with the gm (as she's the one who's your friend) about how I'm surprised they've put the diaeresis in for the way they're saying it but please don't call the child by the different pronunciation - it's not her fault her parents spelt it wrong differently!

First of all, if they gave their child the name intending to (mis)pronounce it "Annay" then they can of course.

Also, do you know for sure that they spell the name including the diaeresis? If they aren't aware of the formal pronunciation I'm guessing they aren't aware to spell it with the diaeresis, otherwise they'd be aware of how a diaeresis changes the pronunciation.

Does anyone remember the poster who called her Dd Ellie "spelt Elle". She was moaning that people kept calling her "Elle".

No matter how many times people said "because her name is Elle" she just would not be told......