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?

this is why I get fed up

I did work with someone and I simply couldn't say her surname properly. I practised and so on - even with some coaching - and I couldn't get it perfect. I think she appreciated the effort.

So my name is Helen. I’m British. Nice easy name yes? My FIL is also British. He absolutely cannot say my name. He pronounces it Helin. I don’t know why. It actually doesn’t bother me in the slightest. But my husband has tried to correct him but he cannot hear the difference. He’s a lovely lovely name. He is definitely not doing it deliberately. My husband says my name. Helen. FIL repeats back Helin.

Also has anyone here watched the Scandinavian show The Bridge? The main character is called Saga. She is Swedish and pronounces her name Sar-ga. Her Danish colleagues call her Say-ga. It is never mentioned or even acknowledged that the two countries pronounce her name very differently. I assume because they just pronounce it differently and no one gets upset over it. It just is what it is.

I also wonder how people feel about accents. Like the Scottish pronunciation of for example William. Would an English person get upset if Scottish person said Will-yam rather than Willy-am?

If there's only one Eva, then they're rude. They also need reporting to HR.

Some occasions require some slack though. Teaching Mia (Mee-ah), Mya (My-ah), Mya (Mee-ah), Meelia and Maia (May-ah) all in one room was a head fuck.

@MightyMort with my accent I'd pronounce Helen as Helin. Isobel would be Isible.

I had neighbours from Yorkshire whose daughter I thought was called Ellen. It wasn't until a letter was delivered to me by mistake that I discovered it was Helen.
Goodness knows how Yorkshire people know which name is correct.

I'd just start calling them all Ben (unless their name is actually Ben 😂). Then, when they correct you, you can say you thought it didn't matter if you mispronounced their names, as they do it all the time.

I have an unusual name that is mispronounced 90% of the time. It doesn't bother me. It bothers friends, family and colleagues a lot. I don't like the attention around correcting people. Two of my kids also Have unusual name .

Anyway one day I had my DS at a doctor and she just couldn't pronounce his name - she really tried. She then explained to me she is dyslexic and it can manifest in this way. There is dyslexia in my family but I had never heard of this. I googled it at the time and sure enough dyslexia can impact our ability to pronounce stuff.

It clearly bothers her so good manners would be to make the effort to pronounce it how she wants it pronounced.

However I will say that I think it’s a bit fussy to be so annoyed by it. I’ve never even thought about it when my name is “mispronounced” when I’ve spent time in other countries. In fact, even in Britain I often have it altered by foreign people to suit their own language even whilst speaking English.

EG let’s say my name is Rachel, in France they pronounced it with a Sh sound instead of the English Ch, and in Spain they pronounced it Raquel.

It would have never occurred to me to take offence. It’s literally just how they say my name in their own language.

This example is interesting. A French speaker may well struggle to pronounce Rachel, because the "ch" phoneme does not exist in French. That would be down to accent - what might be deemed an "acceptable" mispronunciation, as "sh" is the closest approximation of the English sound.

On the other hand, Rachel is categorically not pronounced Raquel in Spanish. Raquel is pronounced Raquel. They are two names with the same root. It would be extremely unusual for a Spanish speaker to see the name Rachel written down and read it as Raquel, because Spanish spellings are always phonetic. They would likely pronounce the initial consonant somewhat differently to an English speaker, but the pronunciation would otherwise be extremely similar. A Spanish speaker insisting that "Rachel" is really "Raquel" would be a bit of a prick.

In the OP's coworker's case, the common international pronunciation of "Eva" is not hard for an English speaker to produce.

FWIW my name comes from one culture, but I've lived most of my life in countries with very different cultures; the vast majority of people I meet mispronounce my name. If someone goes for the closest approximation they can manage, that's fine. If someone deliberately chooses to call me a different name, even after I've introduced myself, they're a disrespectful prick. In my experience, it's pretty easy to spot the difference.

I was coming here to give that exact example!

I used to know two children, both called Maya.

One pronounced it My-ah.

The other pronounced it May-a. (Like mayonnaise she used to tell people!)

We would see both regularly and in similar settings. So often I’d be about to say the child’s name and be panic struck and forget which version I was supposed to be using!

If you’re used to pronouncing things a certain way, sometimes old habits die hard and you can just keep on getting it wrong, especially when the pronunciation isn’t native to your tongue.

In her shoes I wouldn’t bother to constantly correct them because it feels like a regional variation - but I understand her preference to do so.

I think anyone deliberately not trying to remember is a dick. But equally I wouldn’t automatically assume that people are doing it on purpose.

The rest of the conversation sounded dreadful though and I’d not be ok with any of that!

I wonder how many men have their names misspelt.

When I worked in a crèche in Fife in the late 80s we often had a couple of Chinese children come in. They were being fostered by a British woman. The children's parents decided to have them fostered out so that they could work as many hours as possible. I'm not going to comment on that. I would not say that this was a frequent occurrence but there seemed to be a little cluster of Chinese children fostered for the same reported reason at that time. The foster mother said that the children were given British names because the parents simply did not want us using their real, Chinese names. Why? I do not know. Was this true? Again, I do not know, this is what was reported to me a few times.

I thought we pronounced it Ehva in the UK!

The difference being it’s not the initial pronunciation. It’s being corrected and then people insisting on using the wrong name and then laughing about it behind her back.

Yeah we have an Ewa at work. Everyone says it the way she does :) It’s not hard. There was also a French girl called Marine. We found her name a bit more difficult but everyone tried their best!

What's hard about saying Marine?

While I agree that they should pronounce her name as she prefers, I do think it's unreasonable to report a conversation held in the pub, outside of work hours, to HR. People are allowed to vent about things they find irritating, in private, without being accused of micro aggressions or bullying!

If you have a name that can be pronounced more than one way, I do think you kind of have to accept people getting it wrong. Esp if the way you say your name is not the norm for the country you are in! It's not that big a deal imo. It's annoying that they are being twatty about it, but to me, it's a minor irritation.

I've visited China several times, and many younger Chinese people in the cities give themselves Western names. I imagine that within their families they're called their Chinese name, but they will introduce themselves as Johnny or Bobby.
I didn't look into the reason behind it. It might just be fashionable. But in this country I'd imagine that it's to fit in, because many Chinese names rely on the really difficult tonal language for them to work.

Of all the languages in the world, Chinese has to be the most difficult for the average westerner to pronounce. Just saying someone's name at the wrong pitch could turn it from the equivalent of 'Jane' into something like 'cabbage' (or very much worse).

We deal with a lot of suppliers from China at work, and all the email contacts have very traditional British sounding names with their traditional Chinese surnames.

When I was a student my best friend was a girl from Hong Kong. She and all of her family had Chinese and English names. She told me it was common practice for this to happen.

@AdultHumanFemaleOne same here. We had quite a few Chinese children at our school and they all had British names. The man who ran the takeaway was called Billy although he had a Chinese name as well.

This drives me mad. My name isn’t standard English and I correct people every time, but they immediately repeat it incorrectly. 🤦🏼‍♀️

I always ask students how to pronounce their name and practise it until I get it right. I have an Eva (ee-va) and know an Eva (eh-fah, not English). It’s not difficult and you were right to call them out.

I mentioned earlier that some people struggle with pronunciation of words. I googled to provide insight - Phonological dyslexia affects the language side of dyslexia. People with this type of dyslexia can have trouble with sounding words out aloud, breaking up words into individual sounds, not knowing their left from their right, reading stories and poems out aloud and singing.

As previously mentioned this was the explanation a doctor gave me for being unable to pronounce my DS's name. Some people are not being awkward.

I have always checked to she how people say their name/what they want to be called and tried very hard to get it right
I judge others that don't.
I judge them harder if they don't make an effort cos someone is "foreign".
I had a colleague called Afia. 4 letters, said as it looks. Aff e yah. Not hard, not even out of the ordinary. It turned into little Britain " say it again".

Sorry, that was my error - you're correct: I put the stress on the wrong syllable when trying to approximate the 'standard' British pronunciation!

It's probably different now with the Internet, but I heard that a lot of Chinese people would seek a 'western' name by finding an English word, but without knowing whether it was commonly used as a person's name or not - so you might equally end up with e.g. Jane (very standard name), Fanny (yes, a name, but...), Love (unusual but sounds quite nice as a name) or Envelope (ridiculous) - unless they thought it rhymed with Penelope!!

I'd be just the same the other way around, if I had to find a Chinese word that worked as a name. I'd be utterly clueless.