Charis - just too many pronunciation issues??

[Honeybee79]

DH and I have finally agreed on a name we love. However, how much of an issue do you think mispronunciation is going to be with Charis? The h is silent as in "chorus", or "charisma", but I can see this is likely to be an issue.

We wouldn't want to use Carys instead because we're not Welsh and it's a different name with a different meaning, though perfectly nice, just not for us. DH is a classicist and we both love the meaning and sound of Charis, not Carys.

Thoughts please? We love it but don't want to burden her unnecessarily!

Great name. I would pronounce it as in the start of charismatic.

I would have prounounced it as cha-riss (ch as in church).

Is it a big deal though? The person would then tell me it's pronounced caris and that would be that. Easy enough.

Oh yes yes yes this has been on our list for an elusive DD for years! I love it and is also an amalgamation of mine and DH's names please use it OP! Lovely.

I have a friend called Charis. Not aware of her having any problems. I think it's a beautiful name.

This is a lovely name. I would pronounce it Carriss. I suspect you/your daughter might have to correct a few people who assume Ch-aris but I don't think that's the end of the world. I correct people on my surname about 5 times a week and its not really a problem.

If you are going for the Ancient Greek connection you have to pronounce it Haris, like happy, as that is how it is pronounced. In Greek it is written Xaris which in unequivocally a H for happy sound.

If you say Charis, pronounced Carys after the Greek muse, you'll be met with raised eyebrows by anyone who has Ancient Greek or speaks modern Greek.

If you like Carys as a sound just spell it Carys.

Cha-Ris

Everyone will do the same.

My Dd is Charis so obviously love it, but if you ask her, her nickname at school is chairs as that's what it comes up with on autocorrect.
I've found once you mention its Charis with a silent h most people get it, but her Maths teacher last year wondered who this girl was that others called Charis as she had been calling her ch aris for the previous 2 years and dd couldn't be bothered to correct her!

I work with someone called Charis - lovely name

I like it. Being welsh I would probably assume the Carys spelling, but once I knew, its no big deal.
I am giggling a bit at charis being nice, but carys being boring, though. Its the same name .

Booboo, DH is a Classics teacher and he assures me (based on a double first and phd from Oxford in Classics), that it should be pronounced "Caris"!

I don't take his word on many things but on this I am persuaded!

Charis and Carys are totally different names though, it would be like saying I want to call my daughter Honor and someone saying why not call her Hannah to make it easier.

Charis is beautiful (and not just because I loved Frederica!).

PS I know the H isn't pronounced in Honor before anyone jumps down my throat.

Charis and Carys are totally different names though, it would be like saying I want to call my daughter Honor and someone saying why not call her Hannah to make it easier.

So Charis and Carys ARE pronounced differently?

They have totally different origins - one Greek and the other Welsh. The Honor/Hannah example wasn't an exact corrollary.

It was kind of a clumsy example.

But I agree with your point. The spelling of a name has meaning, and lots of traditional names are spelt less than intuitively.

I read it straight away as Sharree, and thought it was a bit made-up-sounding.

I appreciate (having read the thread) that it's a classic name, but not one I've ever come across. I imagine if you haven't heard it before then Carriss wouldn't be your first thought for pronunciation.

CH has four pronunciations in the UK (three if you're English) so I suppose it's to be expected that people might get it wrong at first.

CH - like a hard K in Greek origin words, e.g. chemist, stomach
CH - like church, chips
CH - like sh, in French origin words, e.g. Charlotte, chemise
CH - as in Scottish loch, Welsh bach etc.

If you don't know the origin of the name then you've only got a one in four chance of being right! I'd have associated it with the name Charisse first so would think 'sh', only Sharis doesn't sound quite right. I think I'd consider the 'k' sound next.

But once told, I'd know.

I know a lovely Charis and I think it's a great name. If people do pronounce it wrongly they usually only need telling once!

Rebecca - yes, exactly, Carys and Charis are two distinct names with different origins and meanings. We would not want to use Carys because, nice as it is, we're not Welsh and DH loves Charis because of the classical associations.

It's still on the top of our list. I agree that people may ask how to pronounce it, and that is fine. I am constantly asking how to pronounce/spell people's names - we're such a culturally mixed society that I'm just not familiar with many of them, but once I know, it's just not an issue.

I love that Carys is a 'no way. never' as you're not Welsh. But I bet if you were to go looking you'd find that you contain far more specks of Welsh DNA than you do Greek!

Op, I'm really curious - how come Charis is pronounced Karris in the original Greek as you said?

I always thought it was spelled Xaris in Greek, pronounced Haris? (also e.g. Xristos, pron. Hristos etc). The English equivalent ch is always a H sound I thought, as the Greek sound K is simply written as a K. Or is the original Greek spelling Karis?

But if the OP and her DH both have classical educations then it does have a meaning for them, much more than a tenuous bit of DNA. Also don't the Welsh and Cornish have distinctly different ancestry to the Britons?

Oh I know. I'm just amused at the 'we couldn't, we're not Welsh' comments when Wales is only a couple of hundred miles away and the chances of them having a Welsh ancestor is hardly remote.

It's not exactly 'we're not Namibian'.