To resent my parents choice of name for me?

[Blaengwnfi]

This is a rant - apologies.

I’ve always hated my name.

No one can pronounce it. Not even my father or siblings. It was always read out incorrectly at school and the other kids would laugh at me. It gives me major anxiety having to introduce myself.

I use my middle name professionally but it doesn’t feel like “my” name. I feel so angry with my parents sometimes for burdening me with this name.

Parents - please think before giving your kid a weird or “unique” name! It could really mess them up…

What's sadder is that people use the name for the child, and others will assume that it is said as Lowry. Then someone asks on here how is it pronounced, someone will answer 'low' like not high 'ree' only for a pile of 'no it's not' posts.

I know a few Lowris. None of them say it as (L S) Lowry apart from a snobby one I went to school with who reluctantly spoke welsh with a strong english accent

some people would struggle with Janet-Mary

I just read that as Jumanji. Not really 😂 (Refers to another thread). Strange how some people can immediately dismiss a perfectly lovely name because they can’t read 🧐

I’m 💯 certain that someone’s Welsh speaking grandmother wouldn’t pronounce Sian (how do you place the accent on a mobile?) as Sharn. But there we go. Welsh people have no idea how to pronounce Welsh names - evidently 🤷🏻‍♀️

I'm 100 % certain that my grandmothers wouldn't have pronounced it as Sharn.

The â isn't the same as 'ar' or 'ah' - ah is near, but not spot on.
The trouble is that we Welsh-speakers are too twp to know how to speak it, and need to be corrected.

If anyone is wondering, Sioned is SHONN-ed and Mair is My with R on the end ( one syllable and like Myra without the a, or My Red without the ed)

@BobbysGirly ,
Launch your email, text or other app on your phone that you want to type in.
Type as you normally would until you get to a word you need to accent.
Press and hold the letter on the virtual keypad that is closest to the accented letter you want. ...
Slide your finger up to the appropriate accented letter when it appears. ...
Repeat the press and hold process...

Another thing that annoys me Cariad, as in Cariad Lloyd. TV presenters pronounce it as three syllables, car-ee-ad. It is actually two syllables. Car-yad.

@KimberleyClark , absolutely.
The name is dreadful, but the mispronunciation makes it worse.

To get Cari-ad, you'd need to put an accent on the a. Cariád.
If it was Ca-REE-ad, it would be Carïad.

The aforementioned actress is called Lloyd's Girlfriend.

@BobbysGirly ,
Launch your email, text or other app on your phone that you want to type in.
Type as you normally would until you get to a word you need to accent.
Press and hold the letter on the virtual keypad that is closest to the accented letter you want. ...
Slide your finger up to the appropriate accented letter when it appears. ...
Repeat the press and hold process

Accent over the name Sian to elongate the a - directing the reader to elongate the accentuated letter. Sian - pronounced Shaan. Si = Sh. an= aan.

That didn’t work 😬 But in any case, Sian cannot be pronounced as ShaRn. And never will by a Welsh speaker - or anyone born and bred in Wales, Welsh speaking or not. Such a simple name that everyone who is not Welsh can pronounce properly 😂

My grandson has a little girl called Sian in his nursery class. English parents who throw a hissy fit when she’s called “Shaan”. Her name is Sian! - Pronounced “Si-An”. Parents saw the name Sian, loved it and called their dd it.

Mmm… 🤭 that won’t work in Wales I’m afraid.

No, content with Sioned but no further. lntroduce myself as Sioned-Mair. l'm 64 & not giving up now. l love my name it's me!

It's a great name, @Efrogwraig . I particularly like Mair.
I like Janet and Mary too.

Indeed. I have been saying my name wrong for over 50 years. Sharn indeed!

Your father and siblings could pronounce it if they wanted to, they just can’t be bothered which is horrible. Anyone can pronounce any word with a bit of practice, unless there’s something seriously wrong with their mouth. Or their brain.

You could change your name at any age if it would help you to feel you’d taken back a bit of control. It’s a way of publicly saying you reject the name they gave you (and in the case of your father and siblings, can’t even be decent enough to pronounce properly).

@Blaengwnfi I'm late to the party but I hope that what I have to say makes you feel better:

I have a Gaelic name. Gearoidin (there should be fadas btw).

Needless to say, everyone calls me Gee. Thank God they don't call me that in Ireland!

Gearóidín (Irish: [ˈɟaɾˠoːdʲiːnʲ ])

People hardly ever pronounce mine correctly. I just give up now and the spelling, is never right. For twenty years I knew it was my boss sending letters, even though she must have seen it on the employees list an unbelievable number of times. I named my three daughters with classical names easy to work or travel around the world.

I’ve had bosses spell my name incorrectly, I tell them once politely then after I’ve told them they have got it right. How disrespectful of them to continue to misspell it @Reigateforever

I have an unusual name and I've passed the legacy on. I'd hate to have a common name.

I have an unusual name and I've passed the legacy on. I'd hate to have a common name

Good for you 👏 I have a bog standard English name. I hate it! There were 4 of us in my class with the same name 😏 My siblings all have lovely Welsh names. I always resented my parents for that.

My children all have typical Welsh names. They are all happy with their given names.

My name is a traditional name. But I was the only girl in my school with my name and hated it. I wanted to be normal and called Karen or Claire.😂😂😋I never met anyone else with the same name until I started senior school. But now it's a lot more popular.

I've seen that too. If it isn't mispronounced as Lowry it's mispronounced as Laurie.

Could you perhaps change your name by deed poll so the spelling is more like the pronunciation?

Why should she, and which pronunciation would she go for? How on earth could you do that if the name was, say, French, Irish or Welsh? Change Gisele to Zheezelle perhaps, or Sinead to Shinaid or Sioned to Shonned?

This happened to Sean in America - Shawn, Shaun…..

One of the names with the highest number of different spellings is (whichever spelling you choose) is Mohammed, mainly due to it being so popular in the past, before dictionaries and standard spellings it was usually heard so people had to decide how they would spell it. I guess it’s a similar story for other names too :)

@KimberleyClark

This is quite interesting as I knew Jack is a derivative of John and Ivan is the Russian version I was told but looks like all of those and Sean came from the French name Jehan/ Johan

From Wikipedia: The name originated in the Irish language. It is an adaption of the Anglo-Norman name Johan/John. In 1066, the Norman duke, William the Conqueror conquered England, where the Norman French name Jehan / Johan (pronounced [dʒɛˈan]) came to be pronounced Jean, and spelled John. The Norman from the Welsh Marches, with the Norman King of England's mandate invaded parts of Leinster and Munster in the 1170s. The Irish nobility in these areas were replaced by Norman nobles, some of whom bore the Norman French name Johan or the Anglicised name John. The Irish adapted the name to their own pronunciation and spelling, producing the name Seán. Sean is commonly pronounced Shawn (Seán), but in the northern parts of Ireland (owing to a northern dialect), it is pronounced "Shan", "Shen" or "Shayn" (Séan, with the accent on the e instead of the a), thus leading to the variant Shane.