AIBU to think correcting a slightly unusual name pronunciation is unnecessary?

[Slownie]

Hi all,
So my niece has a parent who isn’t from the uk, she has a name that’s very common in the uk but pronounced slightly different. Think Isabella but pronounced “ee-sa-bell-ah instead of iz-ah-bell-uh or Eva said eh-va not ee-va.

My sister insists on correcting the pronunciation every single time, even if the person mis-pronouncing is most irrelevant and my niece also has started doing this (and also insisting on the longest version of her name)

AIBU thinking that if you are born and raised in the uk you should expect the name to be pronounced the way it normally is, in the uk and not correct everyone, every time?

I'm from the UK. My name's spelt differently to the UK version of it. I don't correct people, even though the UK pronunciation makes it sound like a name I dont like & never have. The country I live in now is an English speaking country and they don't pronounce it correctly either. I can't be bothered correcting people; that'd be a full-time job.

Interestingly, when I lived overseas, and when I've visited other non-English speaking countries, they all pronounced it correctly/differently.

No. Pre-Mouldies.

Leave her to it. Someone responding to this thread saying they don't bother doesn't mean she IBU to bother.

I like learning different pronunciations. It's genuinely useful to learn that Eva can be "Eh-va" or "Ay-va" as well as "Ee-va" and it might prevent me making an incorrect assumption in the future.

The way OP has said even if the person is most irrelevant suggests it’s people who may never see her again or who “don’t matter”. not friends and people who should take the time to learn how to pronounce?

I have a foreign name, spelt a foreign way but has an English version. My surname is also foreign but I would say quite easy… until someone new absolutely butchers it. I don’t think we ever bothered to tell people and I answer to both. I only know one person who corrected people on pronunciation (ee sound instead of I) and no one thought anything of it and said it correctly going forwards. I don’t think either way is wrong.

My surname is constantly mispronounced. Cannot be arsed correcting people especially if it’s a one off interaction. I dont care. It’s just a word.

I have a very unusual name and yes I correct people otherwise how will they learn? I'm 52 and for the first time in my life I finally heard someone calling their child by the same name as me this year. I nearly keeled over because it was so unnerving!

I also have an unusual last name and when I tell people they 'correct' it to a more familiar name. Sometimes several times. Its bloody annoying. For example if your last name was Janssen and someone changed it to Johnson or Jones.

If someone tells you how they want their name pronounced, you should try and use that pronunciation.

No one in this country properly pronounces my surname. No one in my other country properly pronounces my first name. It doesn't bother me in the slightest and I never correct anyone.

Other people feel differently though and that's fair enough. Although I should also point out that sometimes it is virtually impossible for people to correctly pronounce some sounds, if they haven't grown up hearing/using them. My DF could not make a "th" sound if his life depended on it, so I would for example, find it very unreasonable if someone called "Cathy", or any other "th" name, took offence at this.

The names Alexander, Sandra and Francis are English language names pronounced differently but completely correctly in different British English accents. No-one is using a wrong sound.

As annoying at it may be. constantly correcting people is not going to win you any friends.

This exactly.

It depends what you mean by that.

If you are a Liza, then people should pay attention to whether you're a Lee-za or Lye-za.

But if you're a Sandra, then there's only one variant of that name, even if people pronounce it differently.

YABVVU. They have every right to correct the name if people are saying it wrong.

I hope that you pronounce it properly.

I think it’s fine for her to correct people and want to be called by her name as it’s pronounced.

YABU @Slownie to call your neice anything other than her actual name with the correct pronunciation.

Caoimhe, Niamh, Shiobhan, Graine, Saoirse and Aoife will correct you. My name is not Nymph!

If they aren’t pronouncing it right then of course it should be corrected!

Reform voter by any chance?

DGC has a French name as her father is French. It’s a gorgeous name.

This is what I’d call an “inside thought”. She is free to have her culture/ language in her daughter’s name, even if it isn’t the way Brits say it.

Oh OP, you’re being a twit about this!

I have a legitimate but less common spelled first name - I correct everyone who spells it wrong because it’s rude

My name is Michelle. When I worked in London, many of my colleagues from other countries wrote and pronounced it as Mitchelle. It really didn't matter. I think it comes across as a bit drama queen to bother correcting such insignificant things.

I think it’s rude mispronouncing or misspelling someone’s name once you have been corrected though. Some people don’t mind and that’s fine but others find it annoying

Chuffed I read all of these correctly 😆 But then I’m from Liverpool and went to school with lots of them.

My daughter has a name with multiple pronunciations. We use the French one but don’t correct people if they use the Italian one. She can choose which pronunciation she prefers when she grows up.

It's not rude. When people read, they don't study each word for the spelling, they just read the whole word. Then when they know your name they just default to the usual spelling. It's not rude that people don't pay particular attention to you and the way your name is written.

YABU. FROHN-cis sounds unnatural as hell to me as an American, but if Francis from London moves in next door to me, I’m not going to call him FRAN-cis.

I don’t know. It’s tricky.

1. loads of baby name threads on mumsnet talk about a name “working” in more than one language and it sounds like that’s what your sister has done for your niece, but almost didn’t mean to? And intended to give them a non-English name. It will cause confusion. If they have the energy to correct everyone, good for them.
2. My name is one of these names. I got renamed by society moving here and I’ve just got on with it, it’s a lot less hassle. The way people say my name in English is actually quite a nice word in my first language so I thought I was magical when it first happened. Equally, having worked abroad in another country that has a version of my name, they pronounced it their way and it actually made me feel more included and welcomed. Kind of like they had nicknamed me.

Some names are the same but are said differently in different languages. In some cases people switch naturally, but in others they don't.

In my experience, when they don't there are two reasons. One is that they actually cannot say the foreign pronunciation easily or at all. Sometimes they can't even hear the word properly because their ear is not attuned. Nothing is likely to change this, you can correct them as ll you like but it won't help.

The other issue is where people feel they are just saying the same name while putting on a fake accent. Like the Isabella example. It's literally the same name, but you are asking people to put on a fake accent. To a lot of people that feels rude and that's why they are resistant.

So in both those cases I think it's usually best not to correct people. The exception to me might be something like Edith, you might say, I use the French pronunciation, which sounds quite different but most English people can say with no problem. They just can't tell by looking at the name written down how someone says it.