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 agree with you, but this is different to the OP's dilemma.

You are telling people who don't know how the name Rhian is pronounced.

The OP's young acquaintance is trying to tell people how to say the name Brooke. But they know how to say the name Brooke, in their accent.

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@MasterBeth ohh sorry. Think I @d the wrong person there.

But...I am north eastern and would say bruck and so would my friends from home 🫣

@Arlanymorif you asked for me to pronounce your name as Ian with a R. It would be Reeeen. However I pronounce Rhian as you have described.

Sarah is Sair- ra in our accent rather than uh. I would sound very weird saying uh at the end!

Moving on from names, I just heard someone pronounce (shopping) mall as mull. I saw maul/mawl. How are you all saying it?
Person is question has a mild SW accent.

To me it's moll.

Mall like all starting with an m. All creatures great and small. All mall

Its hard to describe how you say things because as several pp have said, everything you liken it to is also in your own accent so not all that helpful to someone reading it all in their accent

All call mall fall stall bawl ball tall

Of course I do. I was just thinking if you pronounce giraffe a certain way you'd say scarf in the same accent so it took me a minute.

@RidiculouslyInvestedInThis true it's all relative isnt it?

Maybe we all need to use the international phonetic alphabet 😄

This is interesting and is making me think back to when we were expecting DS3 and were thinking about girls names (again! we never found out what we were having in pregnancy). I really like Alexandra but was a bit put off by the thought of hearing Alexarndra all the time instead of Alexandra (I'm a northerner down south) and wondering how much that would bother me.

It never occurred to me that it would be reasonable to ask people down south not to say Alexarndra. I thought I’d just have to suck it up.

So I think that’s probably my answer to the AIBU. It’s your accent and I think it should be accepted.

FWIW the thought of hearing a pronunciation that would jar was gearing up to be enough of an issue to put me off an otherwise wonderful name. I thought I was overthinking at the time but now I’m thinking that being cool with variable pronunciation is one of the many things you do have to take into account when choosing a name!

I'm NE and Brooke rhymes with truck for me 🙈

I would say mal, to rhyme with pal

My geordie relatives would also have called her BrOOk.

I think, now you’ve been told, pronounce it BrUck. Just pretend it’s spelled that way.

I remember my American girlfriend when I was a teenager was so confused when I was talking to her about Rupert Brooke and the vowel for ROOpert and the vowel for BrOOke were the same in my Geordie accent

Exciting data here- I was in a meeting today chaired by a Canadian woman. She introduced her colleague “Creg”. “Creg” was a Scottish man whose name label in Teams said “Craig”, and when he introduced himself he (of course) said his name as “Crayg”. Next in line was my colleague Harvinder who is…Australian. Next up a South African woman called Sam. Unsurprisingly, nobody tried at any point to say Craig, Harvinder or Sam in any accent that was not their own and we all got on with the agenda…the end.

I'm Scottish and I COULD say 'Brook' in a way that almost sounds like 'Bruck', although it wouldn't be my natural way of saying it. It's more the way I'd say it if were trying to tone down my accent/code switch.

It would be, as you suggest, a slightly softer 'uh' than the sound in truck.

Pity we can't record ourselves saying the names and upload them for comparison. Maybe MN is missing a trick.

See im in the NE and I would say bruck like truck and luck. I also say cuckie rather than coo...kie and buck rather than boo...k.

It isn't just an accent thing at all, there are 'correct' ways to say words.
Take a look (pronounced luck) in a dictionary and beside the word you should find the pronunciation, and I think you'll find that book, cook, hook, look, nook, look and took (and many other longer words with ook in them) should all be pronounced as uck.

Sorry, I accidentally listed 'look' twice in the above list. 🙄

It's not mispronunciation, it's just a different accent.

Is it definitely not Brooke to rhyme with hook or shook?

Either way, you are not being unreasonable to pronounce it the way you do as that's just how linguistics work. Their claim your purposefully getting it wrong is baseless, you're not wrong, it's linguistics!

No, the transcription is not an instruction, it is a description of how it is pronounced in standard English. Obviously the phonetic transcription for vowels in different accents will be different. Town for instance in the dictionary is taʊn, but in many northern Irish accents will be something more like tɑːn.

in any case, even if we look at the standard dictionary pronunciation saying that book bʊk is pronounced with an “uck” sound isn’t really helpful or descriptive, since words like duck and luck in standard dictionary transcription have the vowel sound dʌk.

as many many PP have pointed out it is completely pointless trying to talk about pronunciation using letters as there is such high variability regionally.

Wouldn't that depend on how you say hook or shook? Which is also likely to vary pretty widely depending on the regional accent.

Very good point!

@MarysClothesyou aren’t a Geordie then

@Bumble2016 book, hook, shook all have an oooo sound in my accent.