Names spelled with diacritics

OK. Thanks.

@GloriaMonday It was for the benefit of others really. You gave an example of the spelling Chloé, but hadn’t mentioned that this spelling is the French one and so is not typically pronounced the same as Chloë.

It was just in case anyone is taking inspiration from this thread. We are in Baby names 😊

@Whatpatternisthis , Why are you telling me this? I was responding to @MrsTerryPratchett 's post.

@MrsTerryPratchett ,it's the name of a company.

@SilenceOfTheTimTams , the difference between Sïan and Siân is significant, as is between Séan, Seán and Sean.

À
École
Été

I’m a Zoë. I use it where possible, but don’t stress about it where it isn’t. My parents actually used Zoé (search engines were not a thing in the 1960s, and they hadn’t checked it in a book). Neither diacritic is registered on my birth certificate. I opt for Zoë because that is how I pronounce it. Zo-ee, not Zo-ay.

I’ll also accept Sue (in Germany), Joe (from Chinese colleagues) and Mrs Cho (in Korea).

Élysées

@Daffodilsarefading
If you press down on a letter on the phone keyboard when typing — just for a second or two — a selection of accented forms will appear. You then choose the one you need.

Loads of Irish names have been anglicised so Shaun doesn’t really stand out for me. (Though it was only through MN that I learned that Shaun the Sheep is meant to be a pun. It doesn’t work in an Irish accent as shorn doesn’t sound like Shaun.)

Even surnames that are thought of as typically Irish, eg O’Sullivan, are anglicisations. The name is spelt and pronounced a bit differently in Irish (Ó Súilleabháin). In fact most Irish surnames today are anglicisations though some people do use the Irish forms and some use both forms regularly.

There are some quite rude people on here.
I’ve also learnt a few things. Such as why some people pronounce Zoe - sorry not sure how to add umlautes- as ZO. I assumed they were being over familiar. I did know about Sean being pronounced differently with the fada. Again, apologies as I don’t know how to add the fada on my phone.
What irritates me is people taking a name like Sean and spelling it as Shaun, I understand way back when someone would have only heard the pronunciation and never seen it written, but surely that isn’t the case now.

I don't know what you think GDPR is but it's nothing to do with having 'rights' regarding name spellings.

Thanks for enlightening me, I based my comment on French where you never put accents on upper case letters, even if they do come with accents if written in lower case. Also I can't think of any French words with the accent on the first letter.

Minority native languages within the UK are being ignored. People are being ignored. That’s something bad imho.

Unfortunately you are right when you say there probably isn’t much recourse for OP at the moment.

What’s the opposing view? That the loss of a diacritic is a misspelling? Yeah, ok. It is, if you want to be painfully literal. So what?

The OP asked about rules in the UK (actually “England”) for records of names that have diacritics and whether there’s recourse through the GDPR. I think we’ve established that there are no rules for exact reproduction and that data protection won’t help.

It depends. In the UK it mightn’t cause problems because people mostly think like you do and don’t see the difference, or alternatively they are forced to accept that systems aren’t set up for them.

On the other hand if I entered a word without the required accent into an online Irish language dictionary, it would most likely tell me the word isn’t recognised. Because it isn’t.

I am not pushing anything. I am trying (banging my head against a brick wall) to explain to you why the existence of an official language with diacritic marks in the UK is relevant to the OP’s question. I have expressed no opinion as to what I think the UK government should or should not do. The only thing I object to is your facile “not relevant” and “so what?” comments.

You’re only right from a very limited perspective. The opposing view is valid from a broader one.

I think you have misunderstood the post that you are quoting. I was replying to a suggestion that people should be forced to transliterate their names in a particular way if a system does not cater for diacritics. I was not commenting on whether it was right or wrong that the system should not allow them in the first place.

I’m sorry, but it isn’t.

And anyway, even if I’m wrong, that’s how things stand and nothing bad seems to come of it.

Yes. It is. It absolutely is.

Seriously? You’re trying to tell me that an official document or company record in the UK that records Sean rather than Seán is as wrong and likely to present problems as if it said Sien or Seen or Saen or Zean?

In any case much of the previous discussion was about whether Sean was a ‘proper’ anglicisation or not. That’s got nothing to do with (apparent) irritation about the absence of diacritics on forms and documents.

Well it’s only simple and easy if you don’t have a name that includes a diacritic. People don’t seem to appreciate that spelling Siân as Sian is like spelling Steve as Shteve or something. It changes the pronunciation and it’s really quite ignorant to just drop them because English doesn’t use them so then they don’t matter.

To someone who speaks the language it is pretty much exactly the same. That’s what you don’t seem to understand.

For example in Irish an á is not the same as an a.
As has been explained already by pp, Seán is not the same as sean in either pronunciation or meaning in Irish.

I have Siân as a middle name. It's on my birth certificate, but any documentation issued since then has never had the circumflex above the 'a'. Passport, driving licence etc. The admin offices for these documents have told me that their systems can't register any diacritics in name spellings.

Not having symbols on letters in some records of names is nothing like Bob/Bib/Bab/Boob. As you well know.

Are you being serious or joking? Not sure at this stage 😅

How can you think nobody cares whether their names are spelt as they should be?

Accents aren’t arbitrary squiggles. Leaving them out is like spelling a name with the wrong letter. It changes the pronunciation and can change the meaning at least in the original language. If your name was Bob you’d probably prefer it to be recorded as such in records, rather than as Bib or Bab or Boob.
If systems aren’t set up to do that people can be more or less bothered, but it’s not exactly ideal by any standard.