To think people should just pronounce her name the way she has asked them to?

[Grandies]

A few weeks ago a relatively young new employee joined my workplace, we aren’t on the same team, but we sit close together and I’ve gotten to know her quite well. She isn’t British, and she pronounces her name her slightly differently in her home language than in English. It’s not a massive difference and it’s a short name (such as it begins with E, in her language she would pronounce that “Eh” while in English the name is most commonly said with a more “ee” sound at the start) and the second syllable is pronounced the same. She still corrects people when they get it wrong and it clearly matters to her.
Last night I went to the pub with some colleagues and some people were making fun of how much she corrects people with her name (she isn’t rude it’s just if they say her name she responds with the correct pronunciation). They were also talking about the fact we have others in the world place who’s names get mispronounced and they just let it go. They also noted it’s hard as the name is pretty popular in the uk and pronounced a different way. It wasn’t a nice conversation, and it spiralled a little into stereotypes of the country etc. I called it out, noted that it was really inappropriate to talk that way about someone and left. I’m unsure as of yet if it’s worth reporting to HR.
I personally believe we should all try and pronounce peoples names as they want them to be, regardless of if they correct you or not, but especially if it’s relatively simple and they do correct you.
My husband disagrees he thinks she will need to realise sooner or later that she is in the UK now, and if her name is pronounced with the “ee” sound here she will just need to get used to it.

AIBU?

The main team is one Danish and one Swedish. It’s based in both countries. She’s not a lonely Swedish person working with a load of Danish. In fact because she’s the main character the majority of the show is based at her office in Sweden.

I have seen it, thank you.

Of course I do. Obviously you have to make realistic allowances if you move to a country where they have difficulty in even making the sounds in your name if they don't feature in their own language.

That's absolutely not the case with a name like Eva - pronounced like 'ever', though - unless maybe an English speaker would normally pronounce the word 'forever' as 'for-EE-vuh' and the county next to Cornwall as 'DEE-vuhn' and so on.

I completely agree with you. My name is Victoria and that is how I introduce myself. It is very common for me to say " Hello, I'm Victoria" to get the response "nice to meet you Vicky".

Americans say AHNA and Brits say ANNA.

Not true. Most Americans pronounce it Anna. I know several, including two in my family. They all pronounce it Anna. But there are also lots of women named Ana in the US from families of Hispanic origin. Their names are usually pronounced Ahna. In fact, I have one of each in my workplace.

Yes, this is my experience. There’s an Anna on my team and the Americans in the team in the US pronounce it as we would, though a bit more Texan. They don’t say “ahna” unless they’re talking about someone who pronounces her own name like that. We all take care to try to pronounce everyone’s name how they like it, all the different varieties of Megan, meeegan, various Russian shortenings of Natasha / Natalia, difficult Egyptian names that we stumble over and check. There are so many different nationalities at work. We don’t expect to just pronounce peoples names in an easy way - we know we’ll have to listen. And we make mistakes all the time, but we don’t take the piss out of people nicely pointing out their preferred pronunciation.

Whatever. Some Americans pronounce Anna as Ahna.

There’s an Anna on my team and the Americans in the team in the US pronounce it as we would, though a bit more Texan

Well, exactly. People pronounce names differently.

A Cockney Dave and Hull Dave are pronounced differently. It's still the same name and you'd be crazy to try and insist one is pronounced like the other in the other place

Of course people should be given the respect of having their name said correctly. You shouldn't call an Ay-vah Ee-vah. But different people say the Ay syllable differently. That's my point. I do think some people on this thread are unreasonable in expecting everyone to say their name in exactly the same way

I think not calling an Ay-vah “Ee-vah” is the entire point of the thread, not whether someone says “ay-vah “ in a Mancunian, Devon or Welsh accent.

Why ‘whatever’?

Like the UK had many regional accents so does the States and likely every country in the world.

As you said, people pronounce things differently, but it doesn’t mean they are unable to pronounce the name that someone tells them.

These guys obviously could do it the whole time, but chose to mock a colleague over it instead.

Well, this is where a long thread gets messy when people don't read all of it or follow the different sub-conversations happening inside it.

I was responding to a poster who complained that her father-in-law pronounced here name, Helen, as "Helin", which I think is just the way he says that name. He's not mispronouncing it. He just talks posh.

You are responding to the original post, where some people were deliberately mispronouncing someone's name.

But if you read the whole thread, you'll find that some posters are indeed conflating the two and can't conceive that someone might say "Ay-vah" in any slightly different way with their own accent.

Or they just forget. Or are more visual learners than auditory learners.

There is a woman I work with whose name is Kate. Or Katie. (And her name is written differently in different paces i.e. on emails, on forms etc.)

I know she prefers being called Katie. Or is it Kate? I forget. I've worked with her for years.

She wasn’t complaining - she specifically said it didn’t bother her at all.

@Grandies I vote for a collective effort to call ALL the men by the wrong names, or just call them all Dave, cos like who cares what they are really called.

Yanbu.

OK - "was commenting", if that makes a difference to the point. (Clue: it doesn't.)

Yeah.

Sure.

Huh?