Names you aren't sure how to pronounce

"Aneurin,
Is it AH-NYE-RIN , UH-NYE-RIN or something else entirely?"

Complicated. Aneurins who don't speak Welsh will pronounce it like your first example AH-NYE-RIN. Think of Nye Bevan and you get the middle syllable.

Welsh speakers would be AH-NEIGH-RIN with neigh as the horse sound, but there can also be regional differences.

I always pronounce Waugh to rhyme with Paw.

@Boscoismyspiritanimal
@IVflytrap
I agree, Bride is probably pronounced as it looks so. Had never really come across it, only Bridie (Bride-ey), which I suppose is a diminutive/ pet form. In Bríd (pronounced Breed/Breej), it's the í that gives the ee sound. Often, though, people leave out the accent and pronounce the name as if it were still there, but in this case probably not.

Waugh = War.

Thanks @rosieposies, that is what I feared. As I remember it, I mumbled something like Jame, which would have been totally unrecognisable to someone listening out for 'Himay'

How do you pronounce the the surname, ‘Waugh?’ I’ve had to use this name recently at work.

@IVflytrap
I'm in Ireland and all Madeline's I know are pronounced Mad-uh-leen. It's how the French pronounce that spelling of the name too, with the Madeleine spelling being pronounced differently there (more like Mad-uh-lyn). My understanding is that the Madelyne pronouciation has come from the literary rhyming scheme used by Keats, and the author of the Madeline books, when they used the name.

@Guttersnipe my late bil was called Jaime and was Colombian - it is pronounced hi-may and is Spanish for Jamie. May be different for girls though!

@margotsdevil Is your Mairead Scottish? I've heard the name pronounced like that in Scotland, with 'red' as the second syllable. I'm not sure of the pronunciation in the North of Ireland. In the South the second syllable is definitely pronounced 'aid'. The Irish language spelling is Mairéad. The é gives you that 'ay' sound.

Juliet - JOO-lee-et.
Keziah - keh ZYE uh (whereas the spelling Kezia is more likely to be Kezzy-uh, in my experience)
Leonie - only heard it as Lee-OH-nee in Britain
Madeline - Mad-uh-lyne. This is the only spelling version where I would use the "lyne" ending unless told otherwise. Madeleine = Mad-uh-lin or Mad-uh-len or Mad-uh-lane...
Isaiah - Eye-zye-uh in the UK (In the US, it's more often pronounced Eye-zay-uh).
Thaddeus - Thaddy-us

I think Bride would probably be pronounced like the English word bride. There are St Bride churches and organisations in the UK, and afaik they all pronounce it as Bride. I don't think it's necessarily a mistake, lots of names were pronounced with a hard letter I sound in the past here. It's where we get Eliza from Elizabeth and why we pronounced Maria like Mariah and Sophia like Suh-FY-ah (those last two pronunciations are disappearing fast these days).

@Heygirlheyboy "read" as in "red"? Maybe should have typed that 😂 Lady in question is first language Gaelic and didn't speak English until school, even now only speaks English when required, so old fashioned quite possible. Also quite possible that my accent isn't quite the same but it's definitely how I picked it up from her... now hoping she isn't cringing every time I say her name!

Per-se-phon-ee beautiful name.

Persephone?

Yes, Sh-von

Shuv-awn!

Is that how you spell it Siobhan?? Is that She-vorn?

Siobhan

Ee-mer!

Eimear is pronounced Eemer

The one that's always baffled me is Eimear. How is that pronounced?

My-raid (never heard read?) would be an old fashioned way of saying, to my ear.

I've always known Rosemary and Rosemarie to be different names with pronunciation to match the spelling it would never enter my head to mix them!

The Mairead I know (native Gaelic speaker) says My read - definitely not like parade. Similarly the Aonghas I know is Innes not Angus...

The trouble with most of these names, perhaps all, is that there are genuinely more than one way of pronouncing them, either because there always have been, or because eg Irish names have been adapted to make them easier for English people to pronounce, or because someone just thought that was the right way to pronounce it

So the issue isn't that I don't have to pronounce eg Evelyn, Naomi, Marie, Alicia, Helena, Irene, Mia, Esme, etc. It's that I don't know or can't remember which of the alternative options that particular person uses. However, I know that I struggle with some Irish names

When naming my children I deliberately avoided names that could be pronounced in different ways. I also avoided names from different cultures, as I knew I might not be able to pronounce them properly myself.

Eugenie is You-je (French pronunciation) -knee!

I know a Rose-Mary pronunciation. It's like Marie/Marie! I love Paw-rick also!