Names spelled with diacritics

The accent does change the pronunciation - in Zoë or Chloë it tells you to voice the "e" sound and not pronounce it like "toe".

Our DD is Zoë. She always puts the dots when writing. They are mostly left off official documents (but are on her birth certificate) but we accept that is a likely outcome of choosing the name. She does get called "Zo" occasionally which always surprises me as it's not exactly a rare name.

My native language has lots of accents but I would never give my child a name with accents precisely because they will be dropped as a matter of course in the UK. We live here and will long term so why choose a name that's going to be purposefully misspelled and annoying to fill in online forms etc? As I see it, we don't have a right to "demand" people write in a spelling that doesn't exist in the country's official language

Unless you are actually French or of French origin and plan to pronounce it Chlo-ay then please leave the accent off. English people who don't understand what accents mean sticking them on names randomly is ridiculous and makes you look ignorant. Same as people who choose 'Beau' as a girls name. It's literally the masculine form of the adjective.

Except it’s correctly spelt if it is spelt in the way you intended. Plenty Irish people in Ireland do not use the accent. Obviously the fada, or lack thereof, can change the meaning in Gaelic, but unless you’re a Gaelic speaker i
this isn’t such an issue.

Chloé will find she’s either called chlo-ay, or it is missed off… do you want it pronounced in a French accent?

If it has an accent, does that change its pronunciation to ay instead of ee? Like café?

i know lots of people called siân. Most would hand write the â but when typing some just use a normal a. With a normal a, the pronunciation isn’t quite right in Welsh.

if you need the é because it alters the pronunciation to the one you’re going to use then go for it. If you’re going to pronounce Chloe the normal way then why would you have an é? I wouldn’t bother

I’m a Zoe with the umlaut who finds it does matter. I always use the umlaut when handwriting things, usually in typing but not always and find myself a bit annoyed if friends forget. Organisations generally don’t support though, my passport and driving license do not include an umlaut for example. You would expect it doesn’t matter and everyone knows the name so would pronounce it correctly regardless but you’d be surprised. Often people try and put a Y on the end or pronounce it Zo which is technically correct without the umlaut. My dental hygienist calls me Zo every time without fail no matter how many times I correct her and I feel a bit silly correcting because technically she’s right as their computer system doesn’t include the umlaut even though I put it on all the forms. It’s not that big a deal but it is a bit annoying.

I am with the pp that Chloe has two dots if you are doing anything with it.

Yes you can, we registered my daughter’s name with a diacritic and it’s on all her official documentation.

As the vast majority of people in the UK have no idea what the little dots and squiggles above letters in foreign languages mean, does it matter?

It looks lovely but it will be more trouble than it’s worth. Youre burdening your child with having to ask continually for people to spell her name correctly. In my work I’d not even know where to find that letter and symbol on my keyboard so she get a usual “e” not one with a line. And good point a pp raised about searching on databases. Sorry OP. Dont do it.

I don't think you'd have a right to insist on a letter that isn't part of the English alphabet, which I don't think acute accents are. We only use them on loan words and often drop them even then. Pretty sure people from, say, China, can't insist on having their Chinese name (which is their correct name, after all) held in Hanzi.

I have a relation with exactly this name. As you can see I am not even going to bother to put the speech mark on. Although her parents persisted with the accent nobody else did. When she got to nursery and school it was always spelled without the accent on it and I don’t think she uses the accent now. She is known to her friends by a nickname. If you live in the UK why do you have to be different and difficult. You have told people here how to put the speech mark on but this is not something everyone is going to remember or bother to do. Certainly not at school.

You can register her birth with a diacritic, but the home office will not include it on her passport. Neither will the DVLA.
If you want it then do it, but as others have said be prepared for it to be misspelt regularly.

Do you really honestly pronounce your UK child's name "Chlo-AY" not "Chlo-EE"??? I bet you don't. The e acute makes it rhyme with hay, may, (wheh said in a southern English accent).

Diacritics smack of chav trying to be posh to me,

unless it is relevant to the persons non English language

apologies if you don’t fall into this category,

this is just my bias / stereotype

We have a double barrelled surname without a hyphen and that is also an issue with some online forms that will accept a hyphen but not a space!

I have no experience with diacritics, but our kids have hyphenated surnames and even that causes the occasional problem, e.g. with online forms that won't accept hyphens - crazy, right, it's not exactly rare. And then sometimes they get an issue when a form that wouldn't accept a hyphen gets automatically matched against one that would and it fails...

It’s a random consideration, but you may find it’s harder to find your name in a database. I’ve recently raised this at school as an issue: when you search our MIS for a name, if it’s recorded with a diacritic, you must search with the diacritic, or the database returns no results. I think it’s a minor safeguarding concern.
Of course, you may think that’s an advantage, especially if you want to be a spy!

If you’re in the UK then her passport won’t be issued with diacritical marks in her name, so good luck taking that one up with the government - see p6 here

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/67f6782fb7e44efc70acc410/Names_that_cannot_be_used_in_passports__v14.0+for+GOV.UK+publication_.pdf#page6

I know a teenage Zoe who is just always a Zoe. No one bothers with the two dots even though it isn’t right.

You might have some level of control over legal agencies, but you will never be able to control every letter, email, card, every time it is handwritten at school, mention of her in text messages, every commercial organisation she ever gives her name to, every informal note…

If it’s that important to you that your child’s name is spelled correctly, don’t choose a name that is so open to confusion.