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.

I was about to post the same

It’s only relatively recently that Maria has been pronounced Ma-ree-a - the traditional pronunciation was Mar-eye-a and Marie was traditionally pronounced as Mah-ry.
My favourite mispronounced name was when my brother started school. This was a time when traditional names were the norm but there was one boy in the class called Xavier - very fanciful for rural Norfolk at the time. However, his parents always called him Ex-ayvier. I always thought this was a unique thing but not so long ago I heard a father calling his child the same name with the same mis-pronunciation.

Why did this make me think of Hyacinth Bucket? 😂

Nae oh me
first syllable long A

But ‘should’ is a strong word. I took the question to mean more like when the individual is 2nd gen (+) of parents who gave them a name with religious/cultural background that they mispronounce because they aren’t familiar with it. On top of that they will mispronounce it anywhere from utter nonsense to an entirely different meaning- sometimes even a negative one.
Imagine for example IF your name said correctly meant ‘beautiful’ and the way you say it means ‘dog poop’

For example, with Arabic (Muslim) names often mispronounce them, not realizing even that they are arabic as that is the language of the Quran. Rolled Rs and a sounds with a hard breathy h are often missing, vowel sounds said improperly etc. It’s not always negative but it’s sometimes a completely different name.

Muhammad is pronounced muh-hum-ed (with a breathy h sound in muh). And I’ve heard ppl say moe-ham-ed.
or malik should be maa-lick (maa rhymes with baa)
ahmed is ah med (with the breathy h sound) and I’ve met ppl who say their name is aa-med or worse aa-mid (both no h and 2nd version has a different vowel sound- amid is pronounced aamid it’s an entirely different name than Ahmed
or Asaad vs Asad (pronounced us-aahd and us-ud and in both the d has a dth sound) the emphasis on the 1st or 2nd syllable makes a difference as they are entirely different names with different meanings.

Though its not like English, you can't pronounce things different ways in Finnish, every letter and syllable have just one way to pronounce (when my daughter was taught to read she was given lists of syllables to memorise and once she knew those she could read anything because all the words could be broken down into a combination of syllables from the lists)

I thought it was pronounced Ex-ayvier! Though its not a name I've ever come across in real life so never had my belief tested.

Maria is another fun one for my family because in English the emphasis is on the second syllable but in Finnish its on the first syllable and that makes it sound different, so half my extended family pronounce it one way and the other half the other way

New someone called Mrs Hovell, she pronounced it ho-vell right Hyacynth Bucket

See I would have said ho-vell because it had a double l on the end. If it was Hovel, then I might have said hoh-vul

@Natsku it’s a French name and generally pronounced Zaviay.

You've reminded me... I had a university lecturer with this surname, he was actually 'Dr De'ath'! 💀

bit of the opposite i have a daughter called athena and people miss pronounce it as anthea or pronounce if a- fee-na it irritates the life out of me and I always correct it xD

Athena is a lovely name.

Ocean prounound oh-see-anne

My daughter is called Niamh. Both pronunciations are correct - believe you me, I’ve checked with linguists, for our purposes (ie living in France)

Just to add to the Naomi debate, I know one who pronounced it as 'Naymee' with absolutely no 'oh' sound in at all.

The ignorance on this thread is astounding. Just because YOU haven’t heard something pronounced a certain way before does not make you automatically right. Ask questions, look outside yourself……you might actually learn something rather than assuming you are better than someone else because they ‘don’t know how to pronounce their own name’!!!

Changed for this because it's my own name. My name is Dionne. Pronounced DEE- on, or Dee-ON. I prefer DEE-on. The other way the French way to pronounce it and I do like it but that's not what I grew up hearing.

But a woman at the click and collect desk in John Lewis helpfully informed me that I've been saying my own name wrong for almost five decades by visibly reeling when I said the order was under Dionne Surname and saying "sorry, can you repeat that? Did.... did you say "DEE-on?" Ok wow. (Small titter) Never heard it said like that in my life." I was fairly curious and also feeling a bit wtf over it so said, "Oh right. What's my name then?"

"It's Die- Owny."

The fuck it is! It's DEE-on! Ask anyone called Dionne!

I was at University with a Greek girl called Athena. I learned that in Greek it is pronounced "A-thee-NA, with the stress on the final syllable. (Whereas in English it would be "A-THEE-na".)

No one has said that they thought the pronunciation they thought was correct was the right one, this is just a discussion. Chill.

That is the correct pronunciation.

directed at “ lnsertcorrectnamehere”
No one has said that they thought the pronunciation they thought was correct was the right one, this is just a discussion. Chill.

My Gwenllian was born half a century before, in the 1870s, few Welsh Christian names in my family then, even though they mostly didn’t speak English.

I have Naomi in my name and it irritates me when people pronounce it Niomi.

@quickchangequeen , I'm sure Dionne Warwick would have set that woman straight!

It's their name, they get to decide how it should pronounced. Just who is anyone to tell them they're pronouncing it wrongly? I work with a Karen who insists it's pronounced Care-Ann and a Marie who pronounces it MA- rie instead of MurEE. I wouldn't dream of correcting either of them!