Someone mispronouncing sons name

[Neodymium]

Would you consider this rude? To be fair I have not corrected this person, who we speak to regularly, as he is representing my son in a professional way. But despite hearing how my husband and I pronounce his name, he pronounces it in a different way. It didn’t used to bother me but it’s starting to get to me. Like he thinks he knows better than us and we are too ignorant to know how to say it.

for reference it’s a name starting with J that can be pronounced is a Spanish way with a ‘ya’ sound (not what we do) or with a J sound which is what we do as he is named for the English origin. In fact it is more common with the J sound but it is an uncommon name and so I think that he just thinks we are wrong and he’s trying to correct us.

Not sure if I am being unreasonable here to be slightly annoyed.

And Jago is Cornish for James or Jacob, and the Welsh and Spanish variant
is IAGO, perhaps it's this?

It is your son's name however you pronounce it is correct wether it is the common pronunciation/traditional pronunciation or something else.

Whenever this person mispronounces it you should confidently correct them. Instead of feeling judged just judge right back eye roll and think how arrogant he is or stupid if he is incapable of remembering.

If this forum was restricted to the Isle of Wight, the name could be outing. But with 67 million people in the UK? Very funny and precious.

As you have done, just keep correcting him and teach your son to correct any mispronunciations of his name. If it's an uncommon name, whatever the origins, people will struggle, even if they've heard you say it before.

I have a friend who has an uncommon name that is not pronounced phonetically how it's spelled in English (it's not a British name). As a child so many people mispronounced it that she actually just changed her name and went by the typical English pronunciation. I met her as an adult and knew her for years and then we travelled to the country where her name is from, and everyone called her something completely differently. And she was like, yeah, that's my name. Everyone gets it wrong, so I just stopped correcting them and go by that other name. So only her family calls her her actual name. She introduces herself as something else because she thinks people will have an easier time with the pronunciation.

Btw, it's a perfectly easy name to pronounce! If she had introduced herself by her actual name years before when we first met, I would have had no trouble getting it right after a few tries.

We don’t need to know the name. People just want to know it.

So you’ve picked a ‘super super uncommon’ name which sounds like it may be Spanish, but its origins are English and are annoyed when people pronounce it incorrectly. Like someone else said - get used to it, it’s going to happen all his life.

Most people who mispronounce it will correct themselves when they hear us say his name. He is the only person who has heard us many many times say clearly how it is said and still persists with the incorrect pronunciation.

we chose it as it is an old family name. So not just plucked out the air.

YABU

Not to mention all the people outside Britain who read it! The membership is what, three million or so iirc?

I didn’t - the way it is written and spelt has only 1 correct pronunciation. There is a Spanish pronunciation but it is spelt differently typically and the Spanish variant came after as well.

it doesn’t bother me that people get it wrong. It just bothers me that despite hearing us correctly saying his name he persists with saying it wrong.

yes I realise I should tell him (which I now have) but for the rest of his life any other time people have corrected themselves when hearing us say the name - we have no ever needed to explicitly say that’s not how it’s said.

i have now told him how it is correctly said. And explained the origins of the name. So will see. He replied to other parts of the message but not to that. Will have to wait and see next time we speak to him in person how he says it. It is interesting though that some people are so arrogant that they think it’s ok to correct someone else’s name though. People incorrectly correcting others. Reminds me of a time I had to get my name marked off as being present at a course. There are 2 names very similar spelling but very different names. I always get called the other one when my name is misspelt. I told them my first and last name for the course to mark me off and they said ‘are you sure? We have you as xxxx’ umm yes I am sure what my name is 😂. D

Hope he gets the name right from now on, OP. I do think it's rude that he hasn't made an effort to learn how to pronounce your child's name correctly. It happens to me and my son constantly, but it's rare for people to be consistently and openly rude about it. (Did happen recently in hospital though - a Dr pointedly continued to call my DS by an incorrect name. He politely corrected her once and asked that she call him by his name, he more abruptly corrected her a second time and the third time he refused to speak to or co-operate with her and when she got shitty he said 'why should I bother answering you when you can't be bothered to get my name right?')

Just a though,...he could have a longstanding/childhood friend with the Spanish pronunciation so automatically defers to that witout thinking...unless I stop and think I always spell clare (without an i) or hanna (without the second h) as they were the first only spelling of thoes names I knew for a long time

Not that I'm saying it's not rude... and I do try to check for all the new Claire and hannahs in my life

I agree OP, hearing you and your DH pronounce the name should be enough, you shouldn't have to correct him. However, as he is not taking the hint, you should put him right. Some of the replies are mean.

Is it Jesus?

I don't know how to properly describe this, but some people have an audio dyslexia, it may even better part of dyslexia, where despite hearing names pronounced they ust cannot get it right.

My friend keeps pronouncing the shop Dun-lem despite me repeatedly saying Dunelm in the same conversation with her. She does this with a lot of words.

I reckon you might be onto something with that guess!

JABU

😁

Excellent

Javier?

Dd has a foreign name and people usually try to pronounce it in English way. Dd or I correct and then they follow. But in secondary school some kids on purpose pronounced it English way just to bully her. Luckily that has stopped but I can see that she will have to correct it rest of her life. But she likes her name and is happy as it's unique.

Javier

I am looking forward to our next catch up to hear what he says!

That could be true as well, but I don’t get the feeling it’s the case. I would consider him to be quite well spoken. I definitely get more of a feeling like he thinks we are too ignorant and stupid to know how to (in his opinion) ‘correctly’ say our sons name.

there has been a few other incidences that have made me feel he thinks we are abit beneath him. He can act abit posh and stuck up. Our family is kind of the opposite of posh and stuck up. We are not posh, but we are also not stupid!