How child's name is pronounced

[OnlyAThought]

Hey all

Just a quick opinion, my LO started school yesterday. When I asked how his day went, the first thing he told was, they are saying my name wrong.

I advised him to correct them, but he feels he can not.

Again, today, at pick up (only part time for the first couple of days as he is in reception), the same sort of conversation and he tells me his name is pronounced incorrectly and stamped his feet said it's not my name.

Should, I ask/tell his teacher, I don't know?

Let me know your thoughts

Define a sensible name.

Which is preferable to you OP…..an awkward conversation with his teacher or your LO feeling distressed?

I had a five year old berate me once for pronouncing Beatrice "wrongly".

I said "Nice to meet you Bee-ah-triss"

She rolled her eyes and said in her best Hermione Granger,

"Um actually it's BUHHHH-triss!!!"

I would be the other way round. I think I'd sound like I was taking the piss if I pronounced the 'r' even though I was doing it with good intentions. I don't think that ever actually came up in my teaching career. I did wince when a colleague always dropped her 'h's so e.g. Hayden became Aiden.

Yes definitely.
I had to do it 35 years ago with my daughter . She has a silent J... and kids ( even teachers pronounced the J)
The name wasn't popular then.
It is now .. but most spell it without the silent J so they pronounce it the altered English version and not the Norse version.
( Freyja)

Possibly, if it's an English name and the teacher is English then they should. If they don't, then what?

@CaptainMyCaptain , I'd probably lengthen the a but my natural accent is rhotic. I feel silly saying Barth for Bath.

@Billcosby , FFS.

DS came home saying the same thing. The issue was, there was another boy with the same name in his class so he was now called Sameff and the other one Sambee, whereas he was used to Sam or Samuel. His first school Christmas card was signed "love from Sam F."

I use a short A in the middle of Alexander and pronounce the R. If I used a long A and no R for just that one word I'd sound like I was taking the utter piss. You can't correct accent. That's very different to a Naomi, Helena, Caoimhe type situation where there's multiple very different versions.

@Billcosby we were given French names to use during French lessons too - it's not unheard of!

DD used to have a friend known to all as JohnnySmithFromBrighton (names and location changed to protect the innocent). He hadn't even moved from "Brighton", that's where we lived, they were all "from Brighton".

Sorry, should probably have tagged @KirstenBlest rather than @Billcosby as I was agreeing with Bill!

And @BarbaraHoward !

Not unusual at all (unless @Billcosby and I actually attended the same school...?)

Fair enough, you can speak to the teacher...but if you send a quick email to the office, then there's a note on record for anyone who covers the class or takes the class in future.

There's certainly nothing wrong with the belt and braces approach.

I worked in a school where more than 50% of the children were from Muslim families. Added to that, many were non-verbal or had other speech and language issues so wouldn't be able to correct me themselves. So the first thing I'd do would be to check the pronunciation with their parents.

In the early days a non-verbal child who'd already been in school for a year, joined my class. The previous class team had been calling him Sho-ab, so we did too. Until some visitors, including a Muslim woman, spent time in my classroom. Before they left, she gently tapped my arm, smiled gently and said "I think, sho-abe".

I was so grateful to her, and from then on we pronounced his name properly. That's when I decided to check with the parents at the beginning of the year, in future, whatever previous teachers had called my pupils.

Slight difference between using a French name for French class and saying DC should only have English names (whatever they are) for school.

As a teacher, we had the opposite - a Sîan whose parents wanted the name pronounced Sigh-Anne.

There's a big difference between having a fun French/German/Spanish name for use in language classes at school...

And

Changing a child's assigned non-English name, which is a representation of their national or cultural heritage, to an English name for use in all school classes/recreation.

One is deeply offensive and racist.

The other is a bit of fun.

HTH

@7catsisnotenough , we had French names for French too. It was OK for those with names with French equivalents but those of us who didn't got lumpy old-fashioned French names..

I have an Eastern European maiden surname. Over the years, I found that parents and pupils had a better chance of pronouncing that than they did my Scottish married surname.

I never got uptight about mispronunciations. (People tend to get my forename wrong too.) However, I totally understand that a child might get upset.

Schools usually do try to get it right.

I recall one time when I covered another teacher's class and mispronounced a girl's name. I immediately corrected myself and apologised. Still got the father threatening to report me to the Director of Education.

This happened the week of my mum's funeral. I recall my HT telling me that he'd had to bite his tongue when speaking to the father.