AIBU for pronouncing the name Brooke as BrOOKe rather than Bruck

[MoserRothOrangeandAlmond]

I’m a Geordie and pronounce words such as Book, Look and Cook with an oo sound rather than the uck sound.
A family who are from about an hour a way said that her daughter is sick of everyone pronouncing her name incorrectly.

I explained that it’s an accent thing as we pronounce those words with an oo sound rather that uck so it wouldn’t occur to most people to pronounce it that way and they wouldn’t deliberately mispronounce her name!

Just as if I go another part of the country or different country they pronounce my name differently depending on their accent.

AIBU?

I disagree actually. A name is a word. Also, if you had an American friend, would you pronounce their name in an American accent? Would most native English speakers pronounce a French person's name with a French accent and a proper French 'r'? I doubt it.

We have a particular way of saying Charles in some parts of Scotland where it’s like Charr-els instead of Charles (where the middle is a soft ahh sound for non-rhotic). It sounds absurd unless you have the accompanying sort of Scottish accent, even I can’t pull it off. I’d find it hilarious someone asking an English person to pronounce it like that though

Also, if you knew a Geordie 'Brooke', would you pronounce her name as the OP does? I doubt that too. I'm afraid I agree with a previous poster that southern English speakers tend to just (consciously or subconsciously) think their accent is correct and that everyone else should adapt accordingly. I say that as a southerner with an RP-ish accent myself.

What accent pronounces Brooke as Bruck? I’m in SE and Geordies oo is definitely longer and more emphasised than my oo would be but both are still an o sound. I can’t think what accent would use Bruck?

I absolutely love how my name is pronounced in a Scottish accent, it sounds great. It's not so great to my ear in an RP accent but amazingly, according to this thread I can tell everyone down south to pronounce my name in a Yorkshire accent and if they don't comply then they're ignorant 😂

According to people on this thread, Yorkshire East Lancs, East Midlands.

Again: in lots of the north of England (e.g. in Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cumbria), a word written as 'Bruck' would be pronounced exactly as you (as a southerner) would pronounce 'Brooke'. Essentially, to a yorkshire person, 'Brooke' and 'Bruck' would be two ways of transcribing the same set of sounds.

@TaborlinTheGreatthis is how I feel.

OK, so, as mentioned above.

Some people pronounce William in their accent as

Will-ee-m

Some people pronounce William in their accent as

Will-yum.

If you were introduced to a William who pronounced their name in the opposite way to you, would you change it? Of course you wouldn't.

What about Dave?

In northern England it's closer to Dehv and in southern England, closer to Dayv.

Are you going to put on the opposite accent to your own in order to say it? Of course you're not.

But only if Bruck is said with a Northern accent not Southern.

I was just going to use this example. When I first started working at a part-time job as an undergraduate in Edinburgh, one of the staff members was called Charles and another staff member pronounced it as Charr-els. The first time she said it I honestly didn't know what she was saying (19 years old, English) so I asked her to repeat it and then said it very slowly and carefully after her to check I'd got it right. I was a few shifts in before I twigged his names was Charles and, decades later, I still cringe to think how stupid and/or piss-taking she must have thought I was, repeating his name after her using her accent in that way. And yes, if I'd continued to say it as 'charr-els' I'm quite sure I'd have looked even more stupid and/or rude. And no, Charles didn't mind which way his name was pronounced, it's just accents.

I asked earlier how someone was pronouncing “truck” for it not to rhyme with “Brooke” (how it was pronounced on the Brooke Shields video) and they sent a link to a “how to pronounce truck” YouTube video. The two pronunciations still sounded the same to me. I genuinely can’t understand how people down south are saying truck that it doesn’t rhyme with Brooke.

@cakeisallyouneedi know a few Maureen’s pronounced as you have described! The other way people say Maureen sounds like they have shortened the name 🤣

Honestly, I should stay away from pronunciation threads. They do my head in, but I can't seem to resist
I'm a linguist, so maybe I have a bit of a head start on this stuff. I suppose I find it hard to understand how people can't just 'hear in their head' how a word would sound in the accent of a Scottish/Geordie/posh southerner etc. After all, we surely all hear these accents pretty regularly (on the radio or tv etc if not in real life)!

You might genuinely not be able to hear the difference. Look up the FOOT-STRUT split, in some accents they have the same vowel sound and in others they're slightly different. Same for put vs putt. Some accents pronounce them as the same word and cannot hear the difference, to other accents it's obvious.

No I wouldn't say it in their accent, as that's quite mickey taking IMO, I would pronounce it how they do with my regional inflection.

But THAT ISN'T WHAT OP IS DOING.. instead of saying Bruck in her regional inflection, she is saying it based on how it is spelled, which is a different regional pronunciation altogether, there's a massive difference!

Op is perfectly capable of saying the word "Bruck", she is CHOOSING to pronounce it how it is spelled and how a child in their region would say it and deliberately calling her Broooke, when her name is actually pronounced Bruck.

If OP can say Bruck, she should say Bruck as that is her name.

Ha, this doesn’t surprise me! My English DH was absolutely boggled by my wee Glasgow granny talking about Prince Charr-ells (as he was at that point). He genuinely didn’t twig and thought it was royalty from some sort of far off realm until I explained. Every time we see her there’s some other Scottish word or phrase to explain to him as while I am also from Glasgow, my mum was from Aberdeen so my accent and vocab is more mixed whereas she is Glasgow through and through. Most recently was ‘roasted cheese’ for cheese on toast, a wee West Coast phrase!

I am LOVING all the voice notes and YT videos in this thread. A lady in a darkened room saying fuck and muck on repeat, Mumsnet at its finest!
Come on @MoserRothOrangeandAlmond, if someone explains how to do it are you brave enough to do one of you saying “Brooke” and “truck”?

(I’d do one myself but it turns out I talk exactly the same as @doodleschnoodle .)

But THAT IS WHAT THE OP IS DOING.

That's how people in Newcastle pronounce that word, the name Brooke, just like the word for stream brook.

If the OP had a daughter called Brooke, that's how they would say her name.

But you must have heard southerners talk. Many times. The 'u' / 'oo' is one of the key differences between most northern and most southern English accents. Along with the 'a'/'ah' difference. Sometimes it helps to imagine an actual person saying it.

Try imagining the late Queen saying 'I say, do fuck off, there's a good chap!' . I assure you she would not have said 'Fook off!'. The posh southern English 'u' is probably closer to an 'a' sound than an 'oo' sound.

It fascinates me, I work where I answer calls for all over the country
I like to play “guess where” when people ring
I know if they say “hi duck” it’ll be Derby
my grandad greets everyone as “alreet cocker”

Oh absolutely, it was always “roasted cheese” in our house. More central than West though. I had an English boyfriend who asked me to stop saying it as he thought it was some sort of twee family phrase. I dumped him.

It is exactly what OP is doing.

Are you capable of saying the long oo sound like as in boo? If you met a Brooke from the northeast would you change how you speak to call them Brooke like Boo?

How do you say duck or muck…that’s how you should be saying Brooke! Forget how it’s spelt and how ‘you’ feel it should be said based on that. I’m assuming you don’t say ‘dook’ or ‘mook’ for duck/muck, so you are absolutely able to say her name correctly. Stop being a dick!