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 feel a Tings Tings song coming on...

Haven't read all the thread but this will be down to accents and how they hear things.

I cant hear the difference between one and won but apparently there is to others.

I'd pronounce it the way you do and it would really irritate me if people I knew well pronounced it wrongly (strangers are different and I would correct their pronunciation too). It would make me feel that they couldn't be bothered to get my name right and I'd be hurt.

Its not that difficult for people to remember either - I know two different Josies. One is Jo-see, the other is Jo-zee and I manage to remember which pronunciation for each as they are people that i like so dont want to get their names wrong.

Same to me!

The t isn't usually entirely dropped, it's just pronounced differently in their accent. If someone usually uses a voiced alveolar flap (like the American d sound they often use for t) or a glottal stop, when a t is in that position in a word, then they'll naturally use it in Natalie the same way they use it in butter or sitting, unless the person is maybe a French woman called Nathalie, and they're trying to approximate the French pronunciation rather than Anglicise her name. Sometimes in something like a strong South London accent the glottal stop can be almost entirely elided in a word like Natalie, but you can usually hear the ghost of it there in the length of the vowel (and maybe a slight thickening in the middle of the aaa sound), and could infer its presence from the rest of their speech plus your knowledge of the existence of a t in Natalie.

Common well-known names will be spoken according to people's own inbuilt English pronunciation rules. I pronounce both my and my partner's names with a long monopthong because I'm from the north of England and follow my accent's pronunciation rules for common British names, whereas he pronounces both our names with a diphthong because he's from the south. (Like Jehhhk vs Jayk, for Jake.) It would sound really weird if he pronounced my name the same way I do in the middle of a southern-accented sentence.

It's not laziness to pronounce common British names according to your own accent's pronunciation rules — I get fed up with people describing pronunciations in different accents as lazy just because they're different from their own, or not the prestige variant. Is it laziness when English people introduce Scottish Mark without an r? Personally I'd be worried Mark would think I was taking the piss if I introduced him as Marrrk 🤣

I would absolutely correct them, every single time. I actually stopped responding to a couple of people in my office until they they got my name right. Petty I know, but I was so pissed off correcting them, other people had no problem.

My name is Nicola. Most people pronounce it as "Nickla" (I'm from the midlands if that makes any difference). I can't say it's ever bothered me ~ certainly not enough to make me want to correct people.

Some people struggle with names, just like others struggle with reading or numeracy.

Similar sounding names trip me up frequently. Think Stefan or Steven, Zara or Sara.

If a name has one spelling but multiple pronunciations I'll be anxious every time I speak and will inevitably get it wrong more often than right. The more I'm corrected this worse my anxiety and the less chance I'll get it right.

@FurryDandelionSeekingMissile I'm not talking about the French way to pronounce Natalie. I'm Scottish for some reason people pronounce it nahalie. I pronounce the R in Mark but not so eloquent as say someone with a lovely English accent. Liverpool would also pronounce Mark differently. I was merely pointing out to have a T in your surname and when you pronounce it correctly only then to be met with "oh you mean (dropped T)"

“Is it laziness when English people introduce Scottish Mark without an r?”
😂

I mean... most English accents are lazy compared to most Scottish ones, no real r’s, only half the ch sound and where are all the svarabhakti vowels?

I would pronounce it the way you say it.

However, I wonder if they genuinely can’t hear the difference between the two different ways of pronouncing it? I used to know a French woman who was planning to call her daughter Genevieve. Every time I said it, she would correct me … except I honestly couldn’t hear the difference.

I wasn’t trying to be an arse (and we were in England).

I absolutely cannot understand how people are saying the two pronunciations are so similar that you wouldn’t notice a difference. Maybe it does vary with accents but with my Black Country accent the two pronunciations are very different. I’ve never heard anyone pronounce the name as A-meal-ya, it’s always A-me-lee-a.

I completely get it, it might seem 'precious' to some but when people continue to mis-pronounce your name after correction, its just rude.
I had a work colleague who decided she would shorten my name (I hate the shortened version) so I politely corrected her a couple of times and when that didn't work I stopped answering her until she called me by my correct name..... it took a while

@Ludo19 I'm not sure which English accents you're talking about — there are few rhotic speakers in England. Some in the southwest, and a few traditional speakers in Lancashire maybe. Almost no accents in England would pronounce the R in words like Mark.

What you're hearing as an h will just be how that person pronounces a t in that position. In your position in that exchange, I wouldn't assume I was being corrected on my own name, rather that they were clearing up any misinterpretation based on our different accents and clarifying that your name is indeed the one which they pronounce as [whatever].

Scuse me, I think you'll find we have ING-ER-LUUUND 🤣

😂 fair point

and people cant afford to feed their families !!! Get a grip !!!!

@FurryDandelionSeekingMissile I was being corrected on my own name. That's what I was referring to. In line with the whole thread. My name has a sounding T, here it is just laziness to drop it.

Honestly you're going to do this for ever and ever so I'd get used to it.

They both sound the same to me.

Surely one of them is just the same as the other but quicker to say?

I don't really get the issue OP. Sorry

I’m glad it’s not just me! I honestly can’t work out the difference.

We have the Northumberland Burr here, a rhotic dialect although tends to be older folk. It is glorious. The rolling R is a thing of absolute beauty to the ears!

There's quite a lot rhotic speakers in the north east too.

Reading this thread, I keep hearing Charles Boyle repeatedly saying "Nicolage! - no Nicolage"

This will mean nothing to people not familiar with Brooklyn 99