To keep correcting people about my name?

[marathonrunn]

My name is Amelia as in Ah-me-lee-a.

On a daily basis people pronounce is Ah-meal-ya.

It does my head in. This is people I've known for many years doing it too. It's not my name. When I correct certain friends they roll their eyes and can't understand why it matters. It matters because it's not my name. It is a constant occurrence in the workplace and I'm constantly correcting people.

Should I give up or continue correcting?

I don't get everyone saying the the two are similar, or that it's accent. The OP's pronunciation has a whole extra syllable, the people who are pronouncing it wrong are leaving a quarter of the sounds completey out. They aren't pronouncing with a different tone, which would be accent, they are completely omitting a syllable.

I have an usual name and despite my best efforts, a lot of people at work used a shorter form of it, like Jenny as opposed to Jennifer. I hate the shorten version but it's how people refer to me.

I've given up on trying to correct people but I am far more helpful to those who say it correctly. I can't control them but can control my response!

Not nah...with a separate y.

Sometimes the first vowel is an ay sound, sometimes it’s an eye sound, the rest of the name is the same.

It’s not merging the sound in the middle differently, it’s a different vowel sound. The same as there are variants on the first vowel with Evelyn and Rowan.

It's barely perceptible. It's like complaining that someone saying "to eat" quickly and asking you something that sounds like "what do you want tweet" is calling you a bird. Technically in Amelia what I think OP is objecting to is people using what sounds to her like a voiced palatal approximant (y) instead of a close front unrounded vowel (ee), after the L. But it's just a close front unrounded vowel that's short enough in this circumstance that it can pretend to be a consonant and not get heard as syllabic, if you hear it that way.

I don't think people will be doing it intentionally, the proper way to say it is a bit of a gob-full so they're shortening to 3 syllables.

Doesn't make it less irritating and it's a lovely name :)

@KimberleyClark you'd think 'Ann' would be safe but maybe not. If you spell it 'Anne' some people will say it as 'Anna'.
Anne Frank - if you watch documentaries etc about her her name is said as 'Anna' - (it was short for Annelise).
Anna in Frozen is 'Arn-na'.

I know somebody like this. Her name is Alicia. She makes a point of saying her name is A-LEE-CEE-A.

I like to call her Alisha. 🤣🤣

Accents affect how you vocalise or elide syllables.

That’s a very noticeable difference.

You should call her by her name.

I’m guessing you are called Jane.

@tabulahrasa , but how do you get a Nigh sound from Na?

I don't get everyone saying the the two are similar, or that it's accent. The OP's pronunciation has a whole extra syllable, the people who are pronouncing it wrong are leaving a quarter of the sounds completey out. They aren't pronouncing with a different tone, which would be accent, they are completely omitting a syllable.
Because accents affect how people pronounce words, the way vowels are formed and the way sounds slide into each other.

It's the same reason why people can learn a foreign language and end up finding it hard to understand native speakers because native speakers will blend sounds when speaking, and different areas will blend and pronounce sounds slightly differently.

The OP has got herself unreasonably wound up over the way some people move between the L sound and the Y sound based on whether the vowel sound in between is done to her preference and at the speed she prefers.

@Needmorelego , Anne was short for Annelies.

@KirstenBlest I have seen Anne Frank's full name spelt as both Annelise and Annelies - apologies I am not sure which one is correct.

Me neither really, cos I thought it was short for Anneliese but looked on Wiki before posting

@KirstenBlest and tbh I 'hear' Annelise and Annelies pronounced the same if I say them out loud.
Apologies to anyone called Annelise or Annelies if I am getting your name wrong.

Ok...hands up. Who read Malory Towers as a kid and thought Alicia was said as "Al - licka". I read it that way for years 🤣

I have a long name which can be shortened to one of many nicknames. People can't even get that right and they are fundamentally different names.

I don't love it, I do correct people a few times - but I certainly don't put this much stock in it.

There is a T in the middle of my name and I live in rural Scotland, so nobody pronounces that because of habitually dropping the t in the regional dialect. That's MUCH more jarring to listen to but I just get on with life.

Because it just does that.

Why is aye not pronounced eh, why are Yew and Ewe said the same in some accents and different in others?

It’s just one of those things...

It's English. We get an uff sound from ough. As well as oh, oo, aw, up, and ow.

Honestly, if we wanted to, we would make na sound like cheese.

I know, the whole thing is petty nonsense.

I think you’d sound like a bit of a dick to correct that tbh.

Was that a 'Shiv-on' or 'Shiv-awn' 😉

Yep my name ends with ‘ia’ and I’ve been doing the same. As you say the difference is minimal/unnoticeable if you knock off a syllable. Big fuss over nothing.

How very dare you.

The name is SHAW-BIN.

It’s not accent. My boss always called a girl named Julia as ‘Jool-Yah’ hard to whereas I say ‘Jool-ay-ah’ we grew up in the same area. I used to grit my teeth every time she said it. I would just keep correcting, or slightly mispronounce their name.