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?

"But there is virtually no way to avoid this, because people seem to have a compulsion to misspell or mispronounce names"
Well, there are loads of names where it really is a sign of ignorance or "enemy action" to get wrong. And there are names which most people will spell or say wrong or have to ask practically every time.

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

No, the point is that you might see naive (a common word in English now with no diaresis) and Anais (a very uncommon name in English with a diaresis AND and weird french S sound on the end) as analogous, but almost no-one else does.
The two are in no way comparable.

Naive helps,because its the same eye-ee sound in the middle.
My sons name is 3 letters long, I've still had it misspelled 4/5 different ways.

I think there's lot of conscious or unconscious snobbery on this thread.

I know how to pronounce Anais because I have had lots of exposure to other languages, I have heard of Anais Nin and I know what a diarisis does to a word.

I am also pretty sound on Kochel numbers. But I do not expect everyone else to have the same knowledge or despise others who don't. They will know lots of stuff that I don't- such as how to actually produce a diarisis on an IPad!

If you hold i down it should offer you the option

Not sure how naive helps- it has two syllables and Anais has three.

People aren't too likely to struggle with the first syllable in Anaïs, are they? Response on this thread make it pretty clear that it's the second and third that are the problem.

Is there anyone here with a name which is regularly mispronounced who feels that their lives have been blighted by it, and that they would rather have been called something that can never be mispronounced?

Katharina, thank you. ï ï ï. I couldn't do that before. Odd that it doesn't give the Turkish dotless i among the options though. I do know where to find one, but thought it might be available right there with the others.

Deepan

My name is an old traditionally French name. Most of my family makes it Italian by adding an 'a'.
English people make it something entirely different. Swiss people usually manage the French pronunciation.

I have to spell it pretty much every time and repeat it slowly. (The NATO phonetic alphabet is really useful...)

Didn't bother me when I was a kid at all, I thought it was kind of cool and people always ended up telling me they have never heard of it and that it's really pretty. So, I perceived all that extra attention as really positive 😅

As an adult it's sometimes annoying in my professional life. But I don't really mind.

It is pronounced a-nay-iss op and it's lovely. Your dads a dick but I'd ignore it , he'll get bored of it and he's not going to be around her enough to confuse her .

Deepan- it's not a matter of "blighting their lives". It's a matter of a constant low level irritation.

I decided to change the spelling of my quite ordinary name as a teenager. It can be massively annoying, but I still prefer it so I put up with the annoyance. But it was my choice. Not a choice someone else made for me.

I have a name similar to Anaïs.
I agree, it's the constant low level irritation.
No one gets it right first time and ceremonies such as graduation or public events always have it mispronounced.

But, Bertrand, it's very difficult to avoid the choice of having to correct people's pronounciations and spellings of your name. You could choose something like Helen which constantly becomes Ellen, Helena, Hellen, Elaine; Ann becomes Anne, Anna, even Hannah; Jane becomes Jayne and Jean; and so on. I've never felt my parents forced me unreasonably into a life of having to tell people how to spell my name and listen to people mispronouncing it - in fact I rather liked that it was fairly unusual.

Nope, I think you'll find a lot less hassle with a name like Emma, or Sarah, or Helen, or Anna. To claim otherwise is seriously clutching at straws. Some people love unusual names, others loathe them. I recommend learning the NATO Phonetic Alphabet to assist those who are a bit hard of hearing or spelling and avoiding words with a diaeresis, as that's just unkind...

"But, Bertrand, it's very difficult to avoid the choice of having to correct people's pronounciations and spellings of your name." It really isn't. If your child goes to a school with mostly "indigenous" brits I bet you can pronounce all but a handful of their names.

Bertrand, the point is that even the most indigenous Brit regularly mispronounces even straightforward names, along the lines of the examples given in my previous post.

I totally disagree

I know a few Annes and never have they been called anything else - I think most people know Anne and Anna are totally different?!!! Yes same names may be spelt differently but Jayne confusing with Jean - I don't think so! Not in the UK.
And as for Helen there's no way that would be confused with Elaine! People may confuse spellings but not sounds imo. I also think most people default to the most popular spellings first

Eg Catherine, Anne/a, Jane,

Where I live (FR speaking Belgium) it's a perfectly normal name, and your pronunciation of it is perfectly correct. Your Dad's being an arse.

But isn't the point rather that the op doesn't live in a Francophone country?
Agree that her dad's being an arse, though.

Well, yes. I guess if you give your kid a French name and you're not French or living in a FR speaking country, you're going to spend a lot of time explaining the pronunciation to people. But, once they've been told it shouldn't really be an issue. This is why I'm not really a fan of using names that don't relate to the language you speak or the country you live in.

FWIW, we gave our kids EN names, to go with our very EN sounding surname, even though they were born here... But they're names with a FR equivalent. So, if people don't know how to pronounce the EN version they often just use the FR pronunciation. The kids don't care, and it never caused a problem when they were little.

I remember we spent ages coming up with names for my half Spanish nephews and nieces that worked in both languages.

Partly because my brother got fed up of having a name no Spanish person could say....

I remember we spent ages coming up with names for my half Spanish nephews and nieces that worked in both languages.

I can imagine. We had to find a name that works in at least 3 languages (English, German, Italian and preferably French...). I'm kind of worried what we'll come up with for DC2 😅🙈

Seriously, Bertrand, you'd bet your house . Who crowned you the only resident Mumsnet intellectual? Several, no; probably most other posters are third level educated as well... ffs!!

"Several, no; probably most other posters are third level educated as well... ffs!!"
I did say most people not most posters But anyway, having a squillion degrees doesn't mean you know about daerisis. Unless they are in linguistics of course....