To cringe when people use accented letters wrongly? (light-hearted)

[CaptainBinker]

Aargh, this really does my head in!

I have a couple of friends who are lovely people but have obviously been playing around with their keyboards and have noticed umlauts - they are now spelling their babies' names with them... Using an O with umlaut because it looks like a shocked face and a U because it looks smiley

Plus there's others who randomly add acute accents because they think it makes them look more mysterious and sophisticated but haven't got the first idea how to pronounce them. I work as a languages teacher (which probably explains why I'm so annoyed!) and once taught two brothers, one called Shaun and the other called Sean (acute accent on the 'e', can't do it on phone ) and didn't realise they were the same name because apparently if it has an accent it must be a foreign mysterious name!

I know I'm being a ridiculous pedant and there's far bigger problems out there but...Aibu to inwardly cringe to myself?

That's amazing nerdgirl72 and badtime, I've never met anyone else who's heard of it. My friend was from a Traveller family, it might be a tradition with them too then? But I'm sure Huggy must definitely be an error!

I don't know how to pronounce the motley Crüe with the accents and want to...

Please

Esmé, the accent isn't over the first e, that would make no sense. It's like Irené from the Forsyte Saga, although I'm convinced Galsworthy made the name up.

And "Jewan" is correct for the poem.

My mother told me she came across a "Gisele" prounced with a hard g

Bound - ö is pronounced a bit like the 'e' in 'nerd'. And ü is... The closest I can think of is the French pronunciation of 'u' in déjà vu (not the way you would say the phrase in English).

Sorry, I'm really rubbish at this

Haha, Misspontypine, same here!

What gets me is when the airlines can't handle accents when they print tickets, but instead of replacing ö with o, ä with a, they often put oe, or ae instead. Then the person travels to a country where these letters and replacements are unknown, and gets pulled up because their tickets don't match their passport. Happened to my boss a couple of times when we were travelling together.

I refused point-blank to consider any names for my kids with accented characters, or in this case, letters that don't appear in the english alphabet. Too hard in this age of globalisation, or englishisation.

Rhienne - the airlines' systems are doing what you do in German if you don't type the accents. But I know what you mean: when their system doesn't recognise accents you often end up with gobbledegook.

I know of twin boys called Daniel and Daneil.

ImThinkingBoutMyDoorbell you are right (alt+0232 and alt+0233 on my keyboard, easy to make a mistake.

its a debâcle