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 know a Louis, pronounced as Lewis. I used to hate the way my boss said Julia she’d say ‘jool-yah’ rather than ‘Julie-ah’. It made me clench my teeth. One of my mums colleagues spelled her sons names phonetically so Liam was spelled ‘Leeum’ and I can’t remember the other one.

I worked with a woman called Andrea, who insisted that it was pronounced AnDRAYah

It's one of those names with more than one correct pronunciation.

I heard a commentator for the Commonwealth Games talking about a gold middle rugby match and some player called Kiven.

OK, firstly Sean is the incorrect spelling. It's one of the anglicised spellings of an Irish name Seán.

In the Irish language, "a" and "á" are pronounced differently. As they would be pronounced differently in any language that uses accents e.g. French.

"a" = ah
"á" = aw

Therefore
Sean = "Shan" pronounced similar to sham
Translated from Irish to English, it means "old"
Seán = "Shawn"
Translated from Irish to English, it means John.

Eoin

No one pronounces their own name incorrectly … the correct pronunciation is how they choose to pronounce it

This is only true if their parents made up a name for them. Otherwise, sorry, but they are wrong.

You can't make up pronunciations of standard names any more than you can make up pronunciations of standard spellings in English.

And when you take a name from another language and pronounce it wrong, then double down and insist you have a right to pronounce it whatever way you want, that's just Anglocentric arrogance.

Whyvonnay didn't happen

Ah but what about 'Yovonne'?
This is the middle name of a child baptised a few years ago in my church.

In fact there are many different accents in Irish, as in any language.
@bitteroulbag

Yes, Irish has regional accents, and even regional terms, but Anglicised pronunciations are not accents of Irish.

In the case of the name Niamh, the diphthong IA is always pronounced EE-ah regardless of accent, if the speaker wants to pronounce it properly.

I pronounce their name as they do

my friends calls my mum Sowsan she is Moroccan and that’s how they pounce Susan

in America they call Craig Creg

Thought I'd give her the benefit of the doubt though she said her name was spelt Diana but actually pronounce Di-ahn-ah.

???
Like Dee-ahn-ah?

Dye-ahn-ah seems fine to me.

I knew a lovely little boy called Kavon....pronounced k-von but everyone pronounced it Kah-von.....his pronunciation was lovely and suited him well. However, he got so tired of correcting people that he just accepted the pronunciation Kah-von......it gave me great joy to tell people the correct pronunciation and ensure people used that for him. Especially when I saw him build up the confidence to correct people himself.....lesson to be learnt here....names are an important part of someone's identity. If they tell you the pronunciation of their name and its different to how you feel it should be said don't be a dick and respect it, its that easy. Noone least of all a child should have their confidence shattered because people can't be arsed to listen to there wish on something so important to them!

Eloise pronounced as if there was a u in there (Elle oooo eeze) not Elle O eeze.

I roll my eyes at her every time she says it but she’s my daughter so I have to take some of the blame as I obviously didn’t correct her enough when she was younger!

JenniferBarkley · 29/07/2022 15:47
Oh god loads of Irish names pronounced incorrectly...
Aoibheann and ayveen is a big one (should be eev-in)
Sorcha as sorsha rather than surruka
Loads of people with unnecessary fadas which does my head in.

MoreCraicPlease · 29/07/2022 22:50
These are legit variations used in Ireland.

Yes, they're used, but no, they're not legit. They're mispronunciations.
The AOI is always a long E.
Taoiseach is not Tayshoch, (or Tea Sock)

There are English accents in Ireland where EE is pronounced AY in some words but the sound EN is never pronounced EEN.

And the random fadas are just people with very little grasp of Irish inserting them because they can't spell.

I grew up in the deep South US.
We definitely have a regional accent...so Karen would be Kay-ren, Gary would be Gay-ry, Mary would be May-ry, Sarah/Sara would always be pronounced the same, Say-ra, Cara would be Cay-ra...etc...any "a" as second letter in a name is pronounced as a long A and says its name.

My mum on the other hand came from A Northern US state...instead of egg like it's usually pronounced she says, aigg, leg would be laig, etc...the male name Al, was pronounced Ehl, so therefore the man's name Hal, was pronounced Hehl.. we used to love her to say my friend's brother's name because he was called Hal...so Hehl (Hell) Jones...we were easily entertained 🤪
There are a million other ways US southerners butcher the English language.

Oh, and when DS1 was born DMIL asked his name...I said, "Will"... she thought I said Wheel ( I probably DID say Wheel with my accent) so she was quite happy when DH told her later, Will, as in short for William.

@HRTQueen ..😂 how could I have forgotten good ole Criag (Creg) in my mum's tongue.

Oops, I knew Criag didn't look right..I meant Craig.

Another..Nancy is called Naync-e.

These are legit variations used in Ireland.

Yes, they're used, but no, they're not legit. They're mispronunciations.

The trouble is, @mathanxiety, if one doesn't accept anglicised names or anglicised pronunciations as legit in Ireland, half the country will end up nameless ( tiny exaggeration maybe 😅).

I do think there's a distinction to be made between Irish names that have an Irish root but have been anglicised (spelling and/or pronunciation) and Irish-language names. Kieran is an Irish name, but Ciarán Irish-language, for example. Brian is pronounced differently when you speak English and Irish. Similarly, I see Niamh said as Neeve as an Irish name, but recognise that it's not an Irish-language pronunciation, while Nee-uv is.

I guess one issue is that people often don't even realise that the pronunciation they're using is so strongly influenced by English. In general, Irish people have a poor knowledge of the sounds of the Irish language (with the obvious exception of native and fluent speakers). Children learn both Irish and English in school from age four or five yet most are taught the phonics of only English, which is a piry, I think. I'd love if we could improve our Irish language teaching, but we can't change our history, and anglicisation is here to stay.

These are legit variations used in Ireland.

Yes, they're used, but no, they're not legit. They're mispronunciations.

The trouble is, @mathanxiety, if one doesn't accept anglicised names or anglicised pronunciations as legit in Ireland, half the country will end up nameless ( tiny exaggeration maybe 😅).

I do think there's a distinction to be made between Irish names that have an Irish root but have been anglicised (spelling and/or pronunciation) and Irish-language names. Kieran is an Irish name, but Ciarán Irish-language, for example. Brian is pronounced differently when you speak English and Irish. Similarly, I see Niamh said as Neeve as an Irish name, but recognise that it's not an Irish-language pronunciation, while Nee-uv is.

I guess one issue is that people often don't even realise that the pronunciation they're using is so strongly influenced by English. In general, Irish people have a poor knowledge of the sounds of the Irish language (with the obvious exception of native and fluent speakers). Children learn both Irish and English in school from age four or five yet most are taught the phonics of only English, which is a piry, I think. I'd love if we could improve our Irish language teaching, but we can't change our history, and anglicisation is here to stay.

These are legit variations used in Ireland.

Yes, they're used, but no, they're not legit. They're mispronunciations.

The trouble is, @mathanxiety, if one doesn't accept anglicised names or anglicised pronunciations as legit in Ireland, half the country will end up nameless ( tiny exaggeration maybe 😅).

I do think there's a distinction to be made between Irish names that have an Irish root but have been anglicised (spelling and/or pronunciation) and Irish-language names. Kieran is an Irish name, but Ciarán Irish-language, for example. Brian is pronounced differently when you speak English and Irish, and most Nialls in Ireland use the anglicised pronunciation now. Similarly, I see Niamh said as Neeve as an Irish name, while recognising that it's not an Irish-language pronunciation, and that Nee-uv is.

I guess one issue is that people often don't even realise that the pronunciation they're using is so strongly influenced by English. In general, Irish people have a poor knowledge of the sounds of the Irish language (with the obvious exception of native and fluent speakers). Children learn both Irish and English in school from age four or five yet most are taught the phonics of only English, which is a piry, I think. I'd love if we could improve our Irish language teaching, but we can't change our history, and anglicisation is here to stay.

These are legit variations used in Ireland.

Yes, they're used, but no, they're not legit. They're mispronunciations.

The trouble is, @mathanxiety, if one doesn't accept anglicised names or anglicised pronunciations as legit in Ireland, half the country will end up nameless ( tiny exaggeration maybe 😅).

I do think there's a distinction to be made between Irish names that have an Irish root but have been anglicised (spelling and/or pronunciation) and Irish-language names. Kieran is an Irish name, but Ciarán Irish-language, for example. Brian is pronounced differently when you speak English and Irish, and most Nialls in Ireland use the anglicised pronunciation now. Similarly, I see Niamh said as Neeve as an Irish name, while recognising that it's not an Irish-language pronunciation, and that Nee-uv is.

I guess one issue is that people often don't even realise that the pronunciation they're using is so strongly influenced by English. In general, Irish people have a poor knowledge of the sounds of the Irish language (with the obvious exception of native and fluent speakers). Children learn both Irish and English in school from age four or five yet most are taught the phonics of only English, which is a piry, I think. I'd love if we could improve our Irish language teaching, but we can't change our history, and anglicisation is here to stay.

Hopefully the powers that be will one day see how screwed up the teaching of Irish is. It should start with pronunciation and move on to conversation. After that, spelling should be a lot easier, because it is so regular.

Anyone ever sing the song when they were a kid... 'I'm Enry the Eighth, I am...Enry the Eighth, I am I am'? We used to sing that song a million times in a row...had no idea that it was actually Henry VIII we were singing about

My nephew went to preschool with a girl named Oceananna... her parents insisted it's pronounced /oh-she-ANN-nah/

My grandfather always said, "You can spell your name S-H-I-T and say it's pronounced /JAHN-sunn/... and nobody can tell you you're wrong, because it's your name!

I just found this...maybe Herman's Hermits were the ones that started the Enry as it was the way they pronounced Henry