Dad 'choosing' to pronounce DD's name differently

[runningaftermydreams]

This is the first post I've written. Apologises for bad spelling... I am writing in anger.

So my DD is 3 months old and I given her an usual name, which I have accepted people will/do pronounce it wrong because they don't know how to say it, its easy Once you know though. My Ddad seems to struggle with it, except today I was visiting with my DC and my Ddad said her name wrong (Again!) so my Dsis corrected him (again) to which my DDad response was "Well it shouldn't be pronounced like that it should be pronounced the way I said it, I am saying it this way"

It then got heated because I told him you can't do that it will confuse her as it doesn't sound anything like her name. He said shes too little to notice. I said he needs to call her by her name that we have given her end of!!
Im fuming because he blatantly told me hes choosing to pronounce it differently, I know this won't be the end of it. I am hurt by this. I know he doesn't like it because it's not a "solid english" name (hmmm my mom is german so hes being a dick), but I wish he would respect our choice.

I am worried about what DP will say when Ddad says her name over Christmas at family gatherings. Think its going to kick off, as this won't be the first time recently where DP has disagreed with him.

AIBU to be angry about this? Wwyd?

Don't apologise for your Irish spellings Wine - it keeps me on my toes! .

And they may be a bugger for our clumsy English tongues to pronounce, but visually they are beautiful - there's something magical about so many letters to produce so few and gentle sounds.

Our girls name that we didn't use as boys was Nora. I think that's virtually impossible to say alternatively and works in most mainstream languages

You obviously haven't herd this pronounced by someone from Washington (Nerh-hra) or much of Yorkshire (Noah-rhu [schwa on the end])*

We are British!

We can complicate ANYTHING!

• Without IPA symbols it is impossible to indicate the right phonemes, I'm afraid - this is the closest I can get with an ordinary keyboard.

roundabout any person with any name may choose to change it later. I have a very ordinary name and I hated it as a child, still don't think it suits me particularly.
My dd loves her unusual name. She loves being the only one in her school, as do my other children who also have welsh names albeit more commonly used ones (that people still spell wrong!).

"Should we not be teaching people not to be dicks instead of insisting we all fit into a box of sameness??"

Absolutely. But I wouldn't use my child as teaching aid.

So you thinking giving your child a name that's a bit outside the norm is using them as a teaching aid?

*Sorry - just catching up and I put Washington where it should have been ASHINGTON (or rather the know-all autocorrect did).

Apologies to residents of both towns in the North-East.

I remember learning French in school and je suis anglais (same ending) was pronounced a bit like on-glay. I think that's why on anais I would presume the end s is silent

Exactly, not only is it difficult in English, it also doesn't seem to fit the pronunciation of the rudimentary grasp of French that English people have. the "ais" sound in many well known french words sounds like "ay", so people who are trying hard to get it right and guess at French sounds will also get it wrong.

It's not at all "don't use it because people will be mean", its more, be careful because its not you who will spend you entire life with noone able to say or spell your name, endlessly repeating it and putting up with mangled versions.

Start calling him by his first name, only mispronounce it or, as someone else suggested, call him Dud or Duddy. How infuriating for you.

user (when are you going to bother with an actual nickname, by the way?) your comment about the s at the end: In Anais it makes an "eece" sound, which is not a normal sound for an english S makes no sense - do you never use the words geese, grease, crease, cease etc. etc.? The spelling is irrelevant here as we are talking about someone who has been told the pronunciation and has heard the sound.

"So you thinking giving your child a name that's a bit outside the norm is using them as a teaching aid?"

I was replying to the pp saying that we should teach people not to be dicks.

But I think that doing anything we don't need to which might make our children's lives even a tiny bit more difficult is misguided. And having to correct the spelling and/or pronunciation every single time for 80 years qualifies.

And again user ais does sound as ay like in anglais. This is aïs and the diaresis means you pronounce both sounds. This really isn't hard. And again, the issue is not with spelling it's with the OPs dad hearing the sounds and still refusing to say it properly!

Bertrand every time? Or just every first time with people who don't already know how it is pronounced because it's not that out there really?

Not read full thread, but I love the name Anais (pronounced as you are doing - A-nay-ees - or A-nigh-ees). My DD1's name has never been used as we used a shortform nickname from day 1. My DM insisted on calling her by the name on her birth certificate even though we never call her that. When DD was around 3yo my DM was calling to her and she didn't respond. She asked me why she didn't respond and I said 'because she doesn't know that name. Call her by the name we call her (and which you have refused to call her) and you might get a response.' So she did, got her response and forever after called her by the name we used for her.

Your dad is being a right control freak. Has he always been like this? Well, let him carry on being a twit. One day your DD will be old enough to notice and will tell him 'that's not my name' and you can apologise to her for him: 'silly old granddad can't say your name properly - you tell him how to say it' and he will see that instead of manipulating you, he is looking silly to his GD. What a silly old fool.

"
Bertrand every time? Or just every first time with people who don't already know how it is pronounced because it's not that out there really?"
It may not be "out there" to you or me. But obviously pretty out there to most people on this thread. And yes, every time with new form mates and teachers. And quite often twice because people will forget. And every time you buy something over the phone. And so on and so on. I think you need to be very careful about the decisions you make on behalf of other people.

But if the OP chose this name and either uses the Catalan or French pronunciation, isn't it possible that her friends and the teacher of DD etc will know the name as well?

Maybe her father is more of an exception...

"But if the OP chose this name and either uses the Catalan or French pronunciation, isn't it possible that her friends and the teacher of DD etc will know the name as well?

Maybe her father is more of an exception..."

I think her father is being a dick. But while possibly exceptional in his dickishness, this thread shows that he is by no means exceptional in his version of the name concerned.

👍😉

That may very well be true.

I simply meant that the OP's friends, colleagues and therefore also their children may know how to pronounce it?

"I simply meant that the OP's friends, colleagues and therefore also their children may know how to pronounce it?"

Well, that'll be fine then- so long as she sticks with socializing, going to school and working with them for the rest of her life!!!!!!!

That's not how I meant it, but ok.

Not that socialising with childhood friends is wrong. Some of my best and closest friends are those I went to school and later university with. Same for DH, btw.

The likelihood is, the majority of British people think the name is pronounced Annay, "like the perfume." As for wittering on about it being obvious that it shouldn't be pronounced that way, "because of the diaeresis"... that will simply be met with more confusion over the use of a symbol considered generally obsolete in the English language. If you then go on to explain this symbol is more commonly used in French and Catalan, and not only results in the two vowels being pronounced separately, but also requires you to sound out the s, people's eyes will begin to glaze over and they will start butchering the sounds to result in "An Arse", and the like. And at the end of the day, the child concerned is unlikely to want to be referred to all the time by the rather formal sounding Anais pronounced properly and in full, and will end up being called Annie, because of the English obsession with shortening children's and friends' names and trying to end them with an "ee" sound.... Personally, whilst I like the name, I'm not sure Inwould ever like it enough to go through all that, particularly if I didn't have the actual excuse of being French or Catalan...

And at the end of the day, the child concerned is unlikely to want to be referred to all the time by the rather formal sounding Anais pronounced properly and in full, and will end up being called Annie, because of the English obsession with shortening children's and friends' names and trying to end them with an "ee" sound....

So true. DH and the in laws call DD Clarissa Clarie/Clary...

So, OP, simply call DD Annie and it's going to be alright ;)

bert I know you were responding to the PP who asked that question, the PP was me. And I completely disagree that we should modify ourselves, our preferences or anything legal to stop other peoples prejudices.
As an aside, in 10 years no one has ever picked on my daughter for having an outside the born name, it's never been mentioned in fact, its just her name. Kids accept all kinds of names because they don't come at them with the same preconceptions as adults do.
Anais is hardly an unheard of name, people may mispronounce it, but once told they will be fine.
I don't remember the OP asking for a critique of her kids name either, just what to do about her dad.

You keep banging on about naive but I can't remember the last time I saw that spelt with a diaeresis

But the point is that people don't have a problem in pronouncing it correctly, with two syllables, and therefore they should be perfectly capable of pronouncing Anaïs correctly.

But I think that doing anything we don't need to which might make our children's lives even a tiny bit more difficult is misguided. And having to correct the spelling and/or pronunciation every single time for 80 years qualifies.

But there is virtually no way to avoid this, because people seem to have a compulsion to misspell or mispronounce names. My name is English in origin but moderately unusual, and I've spent my life correcting both the spelling and pronunciation without being too scarred by the experience. Even if you think you've avoided the problem by calling your child something like John or Jack, you'll still get people calling them Jon and Jak. And then you get the same issue all over again with surnames. So you might as well go for a name you like, unusual or not.

Quite so, Deepan. My hame is perfectly ordinary and said exactly how it's spelt, yet so many people say it differently - in fact use a different name altogether really - even a teacher of mine who had it written down on the register before her, and had taught me for 3 years.

people seem to have a compulsion to misspell or mispronounce names

"But the point is that people don't have a problem in pronouncing it correctly, with two syllables, and therefore they should be perfectly capable of pronouncing Anaïs correctly"
Not sure how naive helps- it has two syllables and Anais has three......