How would you pronounce Alicia

[ArtOfKnit]

Hi all,

My husband and I are trying to choose baby names as we haven't come up with many options and LO is due next week. My husband's top girls name, which I'm also quite keen on, is Alicia, which we both pronounce as A-Liss-ee-a. However it has dawned on me that some might pronounce it A-lee-sha. Would be great to get some outsider opinions on how others would pronounce it. Thanks in advance!

People don't call Patricias.. Patric-ee-ah

but there is a bit of a short "ya" at the end in our family... Patrish-ya rather than Patrish-a (solved by "Pat")

All words that contain that have the cia letters form the "sha" sound.

Artificial
Beneficial
Crucial
Facial
Musician
Official
Optician
Racial
Social

We don't pronounce these words with the cee-a sound so why is Alicia any different?

Alice -ee-a

This thread is so weird, in her 20-odd years nobody has ever pronounced her name as A-liss-ee-ah or the like.
We've live lived in various parts of England, NI, Scotland and Europe. Even people who haven't heard us pronounce her name have always pronounced it as A-lee-sha.

Referring to my sister that I mentioned upthread btw! No you saying the other pronounciation is wrong or anything just in suprised to read that so many would say 'A-liss-ee-ah'

FFS not saying* autocorrect is pissing me off today

CryingMessFFS

Same here, no-one has ever called my DD A-liss-ee-a.

I've taught several and pronunciation varies between the 2 option. Like Marcia. Neither is wrong but poor Alicia will have to be ok with correcting 50% of people she meets!

Good wife has also made me default to Alicia when I guess.

Al-ee-sha is how the ones I know pronounce it.

I haven't met many but I would always assume it's the three-syllable Ah-LEE-sha like the Patricia example others have mentioned.

The Al-iss-ee-a way looks far too literal to me, the way our overly fancy voicemail system at work tries to pronounce the name of the colleague ringing you.

There was a similar thread not long ago about Amelia and while I have heard both variants of Alicia before, I was stunned to find masses of people pronouncing Amelia (and Cecilia, Julia, etc) with separate "ee-ah" syllables at the end, instead of the single "yah" sound that I had expected.

Also as others have said, in popular culture the two Alicias in recent times are Keyes and Good Wife, both said "leash". So I'd expect that to be an influence on which pro punctuation random people will use when they see her name written down.

My dgd has this name and to be honest it's a pain in the ass. I feel for her having to correct people's pronunciation for the rest of her life - I had the same with my own name. Her great gran still can't remember how to say it, and it's been ten years! We tried telling her to remember the short version (liss) but she can't even do this and calls her leesy.

I'm all for straightforward names with no ambiguity in the pronunciation.

Ah-lee-sha.

A-liss-ee-aa jut sounds ridiculous. You've never met a Patricia who says Pat-riss-ee-aa? Or a Mor-tiss-ee-aa?

But Patricia isn't pronounced Patreeesha....

I always thought that Alicia (Al-ish-a) was a pretty name but the Aleesha, Al-issy-a... confusion has put me right off it.

It's Pa- trish-a.

the ci makes a sh sound, is the point.

@willrikers patronising, much?!

cia is pronounced sha

So how do you spell Al-i-see-a

We had this as an option for DD, but DH wanted it pronounced al ee sha as he was thinking of Alicia keys where I had in my head al iss ee uh which is how I pronounced it to myself when I read the Malory Towers books that had a character of that name. We both though the confusion would possibly annoy the future DD so took the name off the table, even though both pronounciations are pretty.

How is that remotely patronising?

"cia is pronounced sha"

"All words that contain that have the cia letters form the "sha" sound."

associate
emaciated
glacial
insouciant

The English language is very irregular, I'm afraid - lots of borrowings!

Posh people pronounce appreciate as "appreesiate".

I suspect that the pronunciation of Alicia is also a class/race marker. The traditional (upper middle class) pronunciation in English is Alyssia, but my guess is that black or working class communities would pronounce it Aleesha (which also seems to be the more common American way). That would explain why people have only ever heard it pronounced one way or the other.

Renunciation.

glacial also makes the sha sound, as does emaciated.

Enunciate.