I regret my daughter's name :-(

[storyofus]

It's Esmé.. (ez-May) she gets es - me all the time.. there's quite a few others.. I just wish I'd called her something else

I've only ever heard Johanna pronounced with the h. My friend comes from Germany and has a Johanna, and I know of one other. It would never occur to me to keep the h silent. Why did you choose that spelling over the more usual Joanna?

I like Esmé. It's the generation of Twilight folk calling their kids Renesmee that give me the ick

I wasn't aware that the pronunciation variation was anything other than personal preference - my sister's niece gets called Esme and Esmay within her own family, I thought it was just one of those things like how some people stress the ee sound at the start of Yvonne.

I think it also has to be accepted that accent marks aren't part of the English alphabet and people aren't going to necessarily know how they affect pronunciation.

Correct people who will use it frequently, and accept that strangers will call her Esme from time to time. It's still a nice name and plenty of people get their name mispronounced.

Esmè isn’t a thing. è is Italian. In French you only see the grave accent within words to lengthen the sound très, père, pièce.

It would never occur to me to keep the h silent.

Not even if you were told that the H wasn't pronounced?

I wouldn’t worry. Who are the idiots who are calling her Es-me?

When she grows up it will be just lovely for her, even if it is unusual now.

Hopefully she will go to a nice Uni, have a nice job and be surrounded by Aurelia, Aurora, Seraphine, Eugenie and the like.

Then the Plain Janes will fade into insignificance and Everyone will know how to pronounce Esmé.

Maybe the way you say her name isn’t clear enough. I’d try really stressing may as it could be that people with differing English regional accents don’t notice the difference in the way you are saying her name or the way they are saying it.

Chloé isn’t spelled like that, though, in English. In English, it’s Chloë, or simplified as Chloe.

Esme is a beautiful name. People who shorten it are rude. You need to correct them.

Yes I know.
Why are so many people "correcting" my post, which was correct in the first place?
Perhaps I didn't write it clearly enough.
True, I didn't mention the Chloë spelling, and that is technically the correct spelling in English, but most people do just spell it Chloe, as I said.
Anyway, this is a complete derail, so I'll leave it there.

My daughters name gets mispronounced all the time!!! She hates it too but I do understand why they call her the wrong name. I think I should have spelt it different. Though it’s the normal spelling of the name.

I couldn’t change her name though as I adore it and those other people don’t really matter.

What a gorgeous name. It’s worth correcting. I understand your frustration. I have a name that is continually misspelled and mispronounced by a lot of people even though it is not unusual at all. It’s maddening. For many years now I don’t even say anything, I don’t even care, but I do wonder how some get it wrong after knowing me for DECADES.

Dont worry, she will soon be old enough to do the correcting herself, saving you the repeated chore. It may be the making of her. I have a name that was not accepted as a given name when I was a child. People constantly called me a similar, accepted name. I was famous for correcting them forthrightly! Nowadays, my name is accepted, but you still get some people who think they know what my name is better than I do and they use their version. It still gets my goat but I correct them politely.

I would have assumed it's pronounced how it's spelt.

Why don't you/she just start spelling it with an extra e (Esmee)?

The name is pleasant enough, but I think she'll have a lifetime of correcting people's pronunciation of it and also trying to explain what an accent is, particularly over the phone. People won't know how to spell it including the accent and may even argue with her over how to pronounce it. Before I got married, I had an annoying, and often misspelled, surname and people would argue with me over it and refuse to accept it was even a surname.

… or Esmae?

It’s just one of those names (like Helena and Mia) that are said a couple of ways). The Ez-may pronunciation isn’t unusual, so you just have to correct people. It’s a nice name.

Personally, I would just go with the English pronunciation :) you're never ever going to be able to pronounce it how the French actually would, anyway.

Speaking as someone brought up multilingual – I don't correct people not of that nationality who mispronounce any of my names, because there's no chance they'll get it fully right anyway.

Or Esmee?

Esmee is a feminine French name that means "esteemed" or "beloved." This name originates from the Latin word aestimatus, which translates to "esteemed" or amatus, meaning "loved." Esmee has a variety of beautiful spellings, including Esmé, Esmée, and the most commonly used Esme.

A variation of Esmé, Esmae is a feminine name of French origin. Derived from past participle of the Old French verb esmer, meaning "esteemed," this much-admired name has come to mean "beloved.

It’s a really common name (as are others on this thread - Amelie etc) so I wouldn’t worry. People will get used to it.

Although TBH I think Esmee is even more likely to be mispronounced. Esmay should be fool proof, but it doesn't look as nice as the others when writen down.
Esmay is a gender-neutral name of Old French and English origins. A variant of the Old French name Esmé,

It's a lovely name, don't change it. It just has two accepted pronunciations, so when people meet her they will need to take a stab with one and then you can correct them - just like with Helena and Naomi, you can but guess.

People who deal with her regularly should use your preferred pronunciation, others don't matter.