Ever met anyone who (you thought) pronounced their own name wrongly?

[ErmineAndPearls]

Inspired by a few posts on the Secret Confessions thread. I once met a woman called Leigh. She insisted that everyone must call her “Lay”. Also, a whole family whose surname is Onions, but they pronounce it “O’Nyons”. Like, just own it or change the spelling. There are more.

No. I have met her a couple of times. She pronounces her name kat-lin.

The pronunciation is generally determined by their parents though.

it wouldn’t be DS’s fault if I’d called him Caleb and pronounced it Cah-leeb. But he would have a lifetime of telling people that it’s not cay-leb but cah-leeb. It would be my fault entirely for being an idiot about his name.

My parents never fixed on a way to pronounce my name (like Ni-oh-mee / Nye-o-me, although it’s a different name. They just pick one at random.) It also has a different pronunciation in France/ Germany/ Norway etc which I can’t do because I don’t have the right accent. Honestly, I have bigger things to worry about.

I've known "K air on" spelled Keren

This thread is really painful.

And that’s correct.

@FullBush That’s actually the correct pronunciation of Kirsten.
It’s my name and originally it was the Scandinavian version of Christine. That’s exactly how the Scandinavians pronounce it.
I say Ker-sten I had no idea they say it differently until I met a Swedish lady who told me.

Ms Moran is really Catherine.

@HorseInTheHouse , Not really, as it's losing the origin and heritage of the name. Just use Joan if you don't want to say Shivaun (or Shiwahn)

Saying it as Sigh-oh-ban is disrespectful

How it's changed to fit in with different languages across many different countries. Spelling and pronunciation.

That's the same for most names, though 🤔

There are huge differences between loads of names that were once the same name. These things happen over time.

You were talking about John, if you were the author of the post, and I asked you a specific question relating to that particular name and its dims as it's a good example of that (also known as the pet name epoch, but there are particular reasons for that hence my question). I'm not being a pedant it's just rather vague for me^

@WitchWithoutChips re Caitlin Moran "No. I have met her a couple of times. She pronounces her name kat-lin."

What I was really getting at was, she doesn't use the Irish pronunciation, she uses an Anglicised one, right?

Otherwise it would be like Kathleen?

It's not really either - she took it from a book when she was 13, didn't know how it was pronounced, and gave it her best stab.

You don't know! 😦

I'm not a 'stace' 🤣. Perish the thought!
It's from a sci-fi novel.

Which post are you referring to?

No need to change your name any more. If you are Emma and want to be Sophie, just tell everyone that’s how Emma is pronounced.

Brilliant 😅

My mother did that to my older brother. She was furious at his wedding when he said Louis rather than Lewis.

Mind you, my name ends with an e but was pronounced with an 'eh' sound, which in the local accent sounds like an 'a' ending, making it a different name. For that, I blame both my father for being Scots and my mother for being a bit dim, as she was the one who told the registrar the wrong spelling.

I was wondering about this, having never seen Sex and the City. But Natasha is uniformly pronounced with a long/broad "a" in the US.

These threads always produce some measure of confusion when non-rhotic speakers render phonetic spellings with an unpronounced "r" and we rhotic speakers see that "r" and think "what?"

@stacestation forgive me, how presumptuous of me. Yeah I just alternate between the too if I have to use it in a formal setting. The rest of the time, I just say Dani. I've never felt right with it 😕

Caitlin Moran's birth name is Catherine. I think she chose Caitlin and that particular pronunciation.

Two* gosh I'm full of typos tonight. Such brain fog.

@KirstenBlest It's a Welsh name. The double dot on the i means the i (ee) is said twice.

Once took a call from Mrs Chevelle when I asked her to s

The origin and heritage is Hebrew, so we have all been very disrespectful going back to the Ancient Greeks and including the Irish people who established Siobhan. This is all nonsense. It's all just a question of time and whether something becomes solidly established. A few people are always first.

Personally I think it highly unlikely that Showbin will catch on in this globalised age, but if it did then that would be that, wouldn't it.

And the day that the Anglosphere starts to pronounce it SHOWbin for some arbitrary reason then you may have a point - but the combination of letters in that order don’t lend themselves to SHOWbin any more than apple lends itself to acre.

"It's not really either - she took it from a book when she was 13, didn't know how it was pronounced, and gave it her best stab."

Interesting given that she had a father of Irish extraction, you'd think he might have commented!

Me I pronounce my surname wrong. It is two words put together but it is pronounced very differently (a bit like Cheeseborough and Shezbruh from earlier).

Before it was my name I heard DH constantly spelling it out and then give up and say the two words together. So I just started with the two words together way).

It was only recently DD and DS realised it should be pronounced differently