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?

It's hard for me, lol. I struggle to hear small differences in how words are said. I just don't clock the sounds properly. And A lot of new pronunciations fox me. I usually joke that I have audio dyslexia. It took me years to learn how to say Amelia, for instance. I couldn't fathom why people chose a name so obviously hard to say.

Unless colleague is being super annoying in how she corrects the pronunciation then the mockery sounds well out of order. But people struggling with a subtle variation in pronunciation, I am sympathetic to how challenging that is.

My word of the day I need to say but will struggle with: enterococci.

At my work people would write
in email signature Eva (pronounced AY-vuh) there are a lot of these and I find it so helpful

I'd say BAIT-ho-ven. Never heard anyone omit the h sound

This reminds me of a time where I did something similar many years ago.

My surname is also used as a first name. A guy in our IT department kept calling me by my surname in emails, despite my first name being crystal clear in my email address and signature.

I tried to use the technique of putting my name in bold at the end of the emails, but he still kept using my surname.

So I started calling him by his surname when I responded to him. After a few emails he showed his colleague (who I was friends with) and said “Why does she keep calling me by my surname?”.

Said colleague pointed out he’d been consistently calling me by my surname in every email, so I was clearly doing it back to him to get him to cop on to what he was doing.

Cue a very apologetic email where he couldn’t say sorry enough 😂😂

My 10 year old has her name mispronounced at school all the time. When she corrects them and they do it again, she says "sorry I thought I'd explained it was (correct pronunciation) Mrs (deliberately incorrect pronunciation)"

She's only 10 but I'm like "YES GIRL!"

(Thereafter hauled into school because they think she's rude. Why do primary schools think they are a form of CULT?).

This is the way the country is going. Hate and ignorance is the new fashion.
God help us if reform get in.

The pronunciation of her name matters only to her. People can try, but in the end, it doesn't matter.

Go to any other country and find out how they say their country's name. Almost every country on this planet says their name differently than the English say it. Are you going to change your ways when you travel? No. English is English. Her name is said a different way here. There are nearly 70 million people in the UK who say it a different way than She does. She needs to adapt.

Most English people don't even have the faintest idea of Welsh pronunciations, let alone most non-British ones - even the same sounds as are common in English and not just the more linguistically challenging ones. We met somebody who had done a full three-year university course living in Bangor, and even he still pronounced it like the similar word meaning a firework or a sausage.

This! There is a Welsh name, Lowri. Welsh equivalent of Laura, it is pronounced Low-ree. The low part does not rhyme with cow. But English colleagues could not get the hang of it. I felt so sorry for the poor girl having her name pronounced like the artist.

We're not talking about a distant country that somebody mentions from their own home in a different country; this is an individual human being, with feelings, who is standing right there with you.

One of the commonest ways of bullying and making somebody out to be inferior to you is by repeatedly using a name/nickname/abbreviation for them that they do not identify as and do not wish to be called. It doesn't even have to be an offensive word - it can be any word or even an actual name, but not one that applies to that person.

Although it might just be a result of somebody's own ignorance and not deliberately obtuse, it still comes across as aggressive when you insist on calling somebody a name (or pronunciation of a name) that is not theirs.

As an acid test, if you were in business and negotiating with somebody with a non-British name to win a very lucrative contract, would you persist in addressing them with any old vague approximation of it and thinking "whatever - that'll do"; or would you somehow manage to get it right?

If you did do that and insisted "That's how we say that name in Britain, so that's that", you shouldn't be surprised if they replied with "Well, you don't use the yen/euro/rand/etc. as your currency in this country either, so I won't distress you by spending millions of my own with you".

Your colleagues are all arseholes.

And thick. To get it wrong once is understandable but not once you have been told. I knew a woman called “Megan” pronounced “MEE-gan”.

She would get frustrated she said at English people who pronounce her name “wrong” (we don’t).

I stumbled a few times and then got it right.

Same with an “Evelyn” I know pronounced “Eh-veline”.

I think people who continue to fuck up names are just bigots.

Hywel is another one that baffles me. So many men with that name are expected to cheerfully respond to 'high-well', 'har-well', 'how-ull' etc., even after they've told people how to pronounce it.

In many cases with a lot of monoglot English speakers, I don't think it's so much that they cannot pronounce it when told how; rather that they think "Well, that isn't a proper name [i.e. one that THEY are familiar with], so I'll adapt somebody else's name to what I think it should be". So unbelievably arrogant.

That reminds me there is a woman at work who keeps calling me “J-How” instead of “J-Hound”.

Let me correct her this week!

She probably does if she has an accent? Isn't that it, it's not that they're pronouncing her name wrong, but that they're saying it in their own accent?

I think she'll need to get used to hearing her name pronounced incorrectly, but also that your colleagues sound nasty and their bullying discriminatory behaviour (the chat not the pronunciation) should be reported.

Just as an update, there has actually been some progress this week. A few of the men who were saying it wrong last week have been making an effort. One of them who has a habit of being a bit of a prick (and is very much protected by the board so impossible to do anything about) has started changing how he says it every time so sometimes he is saying “Eh-Va” but other ay-va, ah-va or ee-va.
The fact that they are all saying it properly now minus the one who I know is just being a prick proves it not they can’t say her name but we’re choosing not to.

You do understand that a name is just another word in whatever language it came from, right? When that person, any person, crosses language boundaries, their name will very likely be said differently. This is about that, not some feelings, or she's a real person, or anything else.

I. Spanish speaking Mexico, there is no Danny, there is Danielle (how it's pronounced, not maybe how it's spelled). Danny's would just deal. In English, all of English, that woman's name can very well be spoken differently. As it should. She needs to adapt.

That’s great (mostly) OP. Sounds like most of them quietly took note of what you said. And the other one - if it wasn’t this it’d be something else I think with that kind of person.

I'm curious, is this about her name or just getting men to obey?

In the end, this entire string is some nonsense. Go anywhere in the world and if your English name is remotely used elsewhere it will be said differently. It is an obsurdity to try to get everyone around you, in their country, speaking their language, to pronounce your name your way in your language. Dumbassery at best, obstinate petulance at worst.

Pretty sure it's about her name, Madammikey.

It's pronounced "Bravo"...

Fully agree with you @Grandies

When people refuse to me it shows their very thinly veiled ignorance.

I don't think it's that at all.

I think if you are not used to certain sounds, then you are not 100% sure what is being said to you or how you might make those sounds. It's not arrogance, it's ignorance.

(I knew a Hywel Jones at school who insisted it was pronounced How-ull, so what are you going to do..?).

Helin is just how posh people say Helen. He's saying Helen is his accent.

Like my Northern relatives say Dor-EEN and my Southern relatives say DOOR-een.

Americans say AHNA and Brits say ANNA.

Just different accents.

Although it might just be a result of somebody's own ignorance and not deliberately obtuse, it still comes across as aggressive when you insist on calling somebody a name (or pronunciation of a name) that is not theirs.

I mentioned this earlier in the thread. Have you seen the Swedish/Danish show The Bridge? The main characters name is Saga. She (and all the Swedish characters) call her Sar-ga. All her Danish colleagues call her Say-ga. I’m assuming because that is how the name is pronounced there. No one gets upset. It’s never even mentioned in the show. I can guarantee you it’s not the shows creators being ignorant or aggressive. It just is what it is. They seem to accept that names are said differently in the two countries and everyone gets on with life.

Presumably everyone watching knows that the Danes (and Finns and Norwegians) have history with the Swedes and do everything they can to assert their independence from them. And that the Swedes just adopt an ex-Colonist superiority to their former underlings.

I'd interpret as extremely good scriptwriting where something that subtle that viewers don't even miss it, they think it's all a sign of everything going swimmingly, is reinforcing that Saga isn't a part of the team - she's other.