To continue correcting people who mispronounce colleagues name

[Gialam]

About 3 weeks ago a new person joined my team, she’s young this is her first real job and I can tell she’s worried about making a good impression.
She’s French-Italian, her name is Eva but pronounced Eh-vah instead of Ee-vah.
For the first few days she corrected people and most now say her name right but now 3 people continue to pronounce it wrong, one is my boss (so her bosses boss) and two are older members of our team.
I’ve been told I’m being pedantic in continuing to correct them especially as she has stopped.
AIBU to continue correcting how they say her name until the show her some respect and say it right? Or should I let it go since she has?

This. Some people have 'word deafness', a kind of aural dyslexia, and they genuinely can't hear the difference between a couple of similar sounds. I've been trying to teach DH to pronounce a fairly common word correctly for years, but he just can't get which syllable to put the emphasis on!

sit down with this young new team member and… talk. to. her!

Exactly it's often the emphasis is just in the wrong place which can change how you hear a word/ phrase.
I've got a friend who calls burger king, burger KING. It's hard to describe but It it sounds really odd. They kind of inflect upwards on the king and it sounds so wrong.

Personally, I'd be taking the boss aside and saying something directly, "Look, her name is pronounced Eh-va and she hates Eev-ah. I think it's going to make her really uncomfortable if we can't get it right." The thing with names like this that have different pronunciations is that people often have to practice saying it correctly until it becomes automatic.

I have a name that is pronounced slightly differently in different languages so I don't take it personally if someone who is say French or Italian pronounce it differently to how I'd pronounce it. But I do get annoyed when people just add random extra syllables.

Similarly, I've met many people with names that can be pronounced slightly differently eg Andrea (aaan-dray-ah vs An-drey-a) or Sarah (Saaa-ra vs Sera) etc and I think it's just rude not to attempt to it right.

Similarly, my mother had a huge issue with names like Nicole/Nicola or Julie/Julia, Marie/Maria. Drove me absolutely mad as she couldn't understand that no, my friend Nicole did not want to be called Nicola.

I think due to the fact she is young and has shown she is bothered by it would mean I would keep correcting people.

I have to say I have a friend called Eva and every time I go to say her name, I have to pause as my brain keeps going to pronounce it Ava, and she is my friend! My brain definitely has a difficulty with this name.

People regularly call me a different name altogether as my surname is the same as a famous singer (well famous for a certain generation). My first name starts with the same initial as this singer so say if my name is Brenda Spears, I get called Brittany all the time.
I don't mind, I am used to it and I don't correct people, happens on a weekly basis.

As are you. Just because you are ok with it, doesn’t mean others are and for many having people mispronounce their name after they have said countless times how to is rude.

OP’s colleague’s name isn’t even hard or foreign in most western countries.

I’m not sure I buy this when it comes to names - if OP’s colleagues genuinely cannot hear the difference between “ee” and “eh”, they’d be mispronouncing a whole load of other words with those sounds in. But I bet they’re not.

I have a similar situation with a colleague who always pronounces an Italian colleague’s name with the (incorrect) English pronunciation, even immediately after the colleague herself and I have just said it correctly. Drives me nuts as the correct sound exists in English, but clearly the person can’t be arsed to replicate it. I don’t raise it but maybe I should.

Keep correcting. Someone at my job has an unusual but not difficult name and we have a colleague who puts the consonants in the wrong order. Think Maoni not Naomi (but that's not the name). It's disrespectful.

As her TL/Manage, yes I would continue to correct people.

My colleague stuck a little info note at the bottom of their email signature which I thought was a great idea, just set internally for a month or so

Just something like...
'My name is pronounced like 'Ava'
My working days in the office are X

You could suggest this to help if your workplace isn't too formal etc.

Not the point but interesting people think it said like Ava?
to my ear Ava (ay like in lay), Eva (Ee like in Bee) and Eva (Eh like in bed) are all said differently?

Hmm I don't know. This is life for people with unusual names. It's probably better to just not get too worried about it. I have a perfectly normal, common name that everyone probably has one in their workplace and I still get called a different similar name by some people. They don't mean any harm by it.

I've just tried sounding them out

They do all sound similar and without very deliberately pronouncing each in an unnatural way then they sound even more similar. Over pronouncing them so they sound different would sound like taking the piss to me

I have a colleague with a name which is pronounced different to how it might be expected. It took me ages to get it right, I still have to very deliberately think about it. In part because I know that there's a "wrong" way and I have to think which one it is. Sometimes having the knowledge that there's a wrong way means your brain goes for the wrong way because brains are weird

You just have to say it's like forever in a fo-evah way. Like Outcast in Ms Jackson. Forever ever? Forever ever.

What about Scottish people who tend to pronounce William Will-yam rather than Willy-am. Would people get upset over that? Would people insist Scottish people pronounce it Willy-am and also House rather than Hoose?
I don't think my FIL has any weird alterior motive for calling me Hannaaah rather than Hanna other than he just genuinely can't see what he's doing differently.

I have a name that some people pronounce with an emphasis on the first vowel, some on the second. I like the second, but I would have been surprised if someone had intervened at work when people pronounced it the other way. I think it’s up to your colleague to say something really. I also had a maiden surname that sounds like a first name, and I got called that a lot too. I blame the parents.

What do you mean blame the parents?
She’s French-Italian, she was raised in France where eh-vah is the correct pronunciation?

Sometimes it's baffling isn't it...

Almost like the poster is implying her parents should have pronounced it the English way all along to make the life of 3 people easier?
Who for what it’s worth are more than able to pronounce the same name two ways as we also have two Naomi’s one prefers “Ny-oh-me” the other “Nay-omi” and they get that right every time!

As an aside, Ee-vah is the way that Italians pronounce their version of VAT so I don't blame her for not liking it.

You would deliberately mispronounce the boss’s boss’s name? To their face?

i often wonder whether some posters have ever been employed

A lot of bravado on MN.

Is it pronounced like ever? If she is happy for you to continue correcting then do it but if she’s not then you’ll have to let her deal with it herself.

Yep, exactly my point. OP took it upon herself to decide that her colleague should be bothered. Not cool. Btw, my name isn't difficult either, pretty common in several languages, some people just anglicise the pronunciation.

Who has told you that you're being pedantic?