No one can pronounce my baby's name!

I have a constantly mispronounced Welsh name. Nearly 70 years of this.

I wish my parents hadn't called me it. We live in England, although Mum was Welsh.

My daughter’s middle name is Seren, because I am welsh and wanted a little nod to that. I now live in England which is why I gave it her as a middle name so people wouldn’t have to say it much. I also understand that people aren’t welsh, so although it’s a very easy to pronounce name, if people do struggle or say it wrong I just go ‘Ah, it’s Welsh, it’s actually said Ser-en’ (no way to write it any different as it literally is how it’s said)
My guess would be that the name is Eira, which to me is pronounced Ay-ra, like ‘may’, but I know some Welsh dialects say eye-ra for the same word/name.

Honestly, just change the poor little buggers name.

Unless you are:

a) Both Welsh
AND
b) living in Wales

Then you are just setting them up for a life of misery any time they have to do the slightest admin (which is pretty much constantly as an adult!)

My parents did this to me (they had lovely traditional names that no one would even blink at!) and they fell out with me when I changed it the second I hit 18.

They were so bothered about my name being ‘unique’ that they didn’t bother to make sure it was useable at all for where we lived. It’s a weird kind of snobbery that their baby just couldn’t have a normal name, even if it makes their life hell.

It sounds like something is happening similar to the boy's name Dewi. A friend's husband is named this and it always takes me by surprise, I can never remember how it's pronounced because it doesn't look like an English word (of course, because it isn't!) so my brain tries to bring in all kinds of foreign pronunciations - I go through Duey, De-vee, Doey, Duvey, Dowey, Dee-wee.

It was only after seeing a MN thread about the name that I clicked it was Welsh and it really is say what you see (Deh - wee) - that pronounciation simply never occurred to me which is why even though I'd heard the name spoken, I could never remember it.

The thing is that a short e in English is usually followed by a hard consonant such as t, n, d - for example, met, pen, bed. When you just have a short e alone it makes the sound ee, like in be, me, he. When you have a softer consonant like l, s, it's usually doubled - bell, mess. And when you have a w, the w doesn't act like a consonant at all but a modifier for the vowel - see words like sew, new. So in fact in English, Dewi isn't especially phonetic because that combination De | wi wouldn't exist like that.

I am guessing your daughter's name has a somewhat similar pattern, where the two syllables have a different spelling than would commonly appear together in English.

My friend has two girls with names that match your definition (4 letters on each name) and I have to think so hard about the correct pronunciation because you could say the names in a multitude of ways.

I really liked Louis as a boys name but knew that he’d get called Lewis even though my chosen pronunciation would have been Louie.

I say stick with it. My son, with an unusual Irish name and surname, spent his first school years in an English village where all children were called George, Louis, Harrison, Emilia, Sophie and Alice. (That’s only a slight exaggeration — his Reception class had three Alices, three Harrisons and a Harry, two Louis, two Georges and three girls who had variants on Emilia/Amelia.) People managed. His classmates didn’t turn a hair.

He’s now at a school with Irish, French, Polish, Czech, Arabic, Nigerian, Spanish and other names.

I think I might know what it is now you've said about the extra sounds.

I've got a name which is similar to another name - my friends all (of course!) know what my name is but I do have to mention it quite a bit to other people which is a pain. I also get lots of different spellings which doesn't really bother me so long as they are spellings of my name and not the other name - which also happens. And mine isn't difficult, it's more that it's close to another name.

If yours is worse than that and it's already bothering you, I may be tempted to go for the easy option!

Is it angharad? Or Blodwyn? Are you welsh?

I have to tell people how to pronounce my name every single time I am not in the country of its origin. It is only the odd time maybe once every couple of years I meet someone who has travelled to that country and knows the name that I don't have to say it's XXXX. Because it is not with an English alphabet that also helps as people often ask "sorry I'm not sure if I pronounced that correctly?"

I think you have to accept you seem to have unwittingly set your baby up to live this life too. They will cope!

It doesn't bother me and depending on where I am I sometimes let it go...i.e. when the Starbucks barista shouts a certain word I can guess he means me...

My frequently mispronounced name is also Welsh, and my top tip is to tell people that it's Welsh. Not because it'll help them pronounce it - it won't - but because I find it makes people more tolerant/try harder. People are very judgy of 'made-up'/'yoonique' names and I find they're often a bit sneery about not knowing how to say it if they think that, and then are instantly nicer if I say it's Welsh, either because they then think it's a 'proper' name or because they realise that being a bit of an arse about pronouncing a Welsh name makes you look like a bit of a twat/bigot.

I chose common traditional names for my DC as I have spent my life not only spelling out my name endlessly but also explaining how to pronounce it. All my DCs family on their father's side mispronounce my name and teach new family members how to say it wrong. I would love to have a common name. I also had an unusual surname, which has to be spelt out. I'm glad my married surname is common.
Please think of this when naming children.

Evelyn - I see it as Eve-lyn, and had until a few years ago thought that others said it as Ev-lyn. The Evva-lyn pronunciation is new to me, yet the name seems everywhere.,

My DD has a name from Shakespeare that isn't desperately uncommon but also has a name from hell as her surname ( Russian). She used to dread new teachers/first day of term each time as they stuttered over not just her bloody surname but her first name. We always call her by a short version and I kind of wish that's what we had named her. But now she's an adult she says it was a small price to pay for not have the same name as everyone else in her year .

I think a Welsh name like an Irish name can be tricky but just get in quick as others suggest

It probably won't be a big an issue as you imagine as she grows up.

However, I would feel quite insulted if a grandparent consistently got it wrong! Is your MIL being deliberately obtuse because she doesn't like the name? Unless she has cognitive or processsing issues then she should be able to correctly pronounce a 2 syllable name when shown how to.

I'd feel quite hurt about that.

Mines welsh too. I'm wondering if it's the same one!

Please just share the name. Maybe someone will have dealt with it before and knows how best to educate on the name

I'm intrigued about a 2 syllable girl's name that

• can be pronounced in different ways,
• sounds ugly when mispronounced,
• is very unusual,

Is it Saoirse?

My DDs name is Gia. GEE-AH. Just like Gina but without the N. The amount of people who read the G as in Gate. It surprises me but we just raise an eyebrow until they realise its Gia as in Jia. Like you wouldn't read George as in Gorge(ous). Also, It's so hard to write down this example 😁

My name is the opposite of uncommon, it's one of those 70s/ 80s names that half the bloody school year seemed to have. It's really well known. Most of the people in my life have a different way of saying it- my dad has always said it differently from my mum, my DH says it differently from both of them colleagues from when I worked in Cambs say it differently from how colleagues in Manchester say it, and when I lived in Wales it was again said differently (and my favourite way). Accents change a lot. It doesn't bother me at all.

Oh and further to your "understand me correctly" - I always have to repeat my name, sometimes twice, hey ho.

OP - It may also not be deliberate mispronunciation. I was brought up in an Italian family, so naturally use pronunciations of letters that fit in with that heritage. Upthread someone used Mia, and Leah, and then used both and Anglicised and Italianate version of each, assuming they are English it goes to show how we all use language differently.

I would use Mee-ah and Leh-ya, because an "i" is and eeee, and an "e" is an eh. But that's just me. In England we tend to say Eee-ran, not Eye-ran, so again, Italianate rather than English.

Don't get too hung up on it, I have a very long name, easy to say, never, ever spelt right, EVER. It is actually completely normal and natural, but because it is long, people assume is has to be somehow complicated. And NO, it doesn't have a hyphen!! Also, always, always, get's shortened, which is sad.

Is it like Evelyn in the sense that there is more than one accepted pronunciation and it depends on where you live? Using the Evelyn example, people pronounce it ‘eve-lyn’ and ‘ev-a-lyn’ and subtle variations depending on their regional accent and local usage. Neither is incorrect per se. Similarly, Esme - I have met both ‘es-mee’ and ‘es-may’ spelt the same way, but pronounced differently by people from different places. Neither pronunciation is actually wrong, just used by people in different regions.