Pronouncing baby's name wrong

[MrsLeighHalfpenny]

Friend has had a baby girl - Anaïs.

Lovely name, but they pronounce it Annay, and not An-eye-ees.

I saw it written down before I heard them say it, and said “I love the name Anaïs” to the grandmother (also my friend). She told me that that’s not how it should be pronounced.

Should I explain what a diaeresis is for?

My dd has a grave accent. Its always forgotten. It changes her whole name. I always remind the school to put it on, even by hand.

Oh dear. It doesn't seem like they put much thought/ did much research. They are going to get so fed up with correcting people.

My real name was always answered with "what? Who?" So much so i haven't used that name since I was a teenager. There's nothing more embarrassing/confidence knocking when you're young. I just wanted a NORMAL name. That's why my children will/have classic, easy to spell/pronounce names. Anyway, I digress...

I would have said Anais with an 's'.

It’s pronounced An-ay-is, after the French author Anais Nin.

No, it isn't. Listen to the pronunciation 40 secs into for Anaïs Anaïs.

This is the first I'm seeing this name, I am seriously struggling to see how anybody could get "annay" out of that o.O

Anyway I'd passive-aggressively go "hello anais. OH SORRY I MEAN annay"

My parents pronounce my (French) name differently. Not differently from the world at large, differently from each other.
I tend to use a diminutive.
It didn't bother me as a child, as I thought it was a regional variation - like bath and Barth or castle and car-sel. They were in love, married and living together when I was born (and still). The mind boggles how they got through the 'what shall we call our baby' chat without realizing they were saying it differently.
No one knows, I don't use my full name in the family!

I would say an ay es, but once I was doing a marketing campaign with Aden + anais and in their brand guidelines doc that they sent over they said it’s pronounced an-nay for their brand! Which surprised me but apparently that’s the pronounciation they officially use.

Definitely don’t “correct” the parents as that will come across very rude. We had a teacher who refused to pronounce the EE sound with Zoe and Chloe as the girls didn’t have the dots on the e, so she insisted they had to be called as one syllable zo and Chlo and Just came across as a nutter and a bit of a twat being so pedantic!

Roll with it, maybe one day she will find out. Annay is super incorrect as a pronunciation, clearly they did not do a lot of research into it.

I once knew a girl whose parents called her 'Chardonnay', unfortunately they did not know how to spell it, so they spelled it in a way it would/should read as 'Shardeen', and she was always upset people would get that wrong by reading her name.

Surely it's up to her parents how her name is pronounced?

It's not really for you to tell them.

My DDs got a friend who called her little boy Louis....Oh that's gorgeous, I said, I love "loo-eee", she looked at me in horror and said "it's pronounced Lewis". I despair. Why saddle a child with a name that everyone is going to say wrong for its entire life

Does anyone remember the poster who called her Dd Ellie "spelt Elle". She was moaning that people kept calling her "Elle".

No matter how many times people said "because her name is Elle" she just would not be told......

First of all, if they gave their child the name intending to (mis)pronounce it "Annay" then they can of course.

Also, do you know for sure that they spell the name including the diaeresis? If they aren't aware of the formal pronunciation I'm guessing they aren't aware to spell it with the diaeresis, otherwise they'd be aware of how a diaeresis changes the pronunciation.

They're not pronouncing her name wrong - they picked it!
They just haven't spelt it the way you expect for how it's said.

I might at some point have a conversation with the gm (as she's the one who's your friend) about how I'm surprised they've put the diaeresis in for the way they're saying it but please don't call the child by the different pronunciation - it's not her fault her parents spelt it wrong differently!

I work with a lovely French girl named Anais, she pronounces it An-ey-iss. Not 'eye'

If they want to say it as Annay, let them.
A colleague has a DD named Elodie, and they say it to rhyme with Melody. Their child...
Similarly the countless Amelies pronounced Ammerly in this country.

Of course you can pronounce it how you like. Anyone can pronounce their child's name however they like. But the name Anaïs is correctly pronounced ann ah eess. The two dots over the i are specifically there to indicate that you pronounce the 'a' and the 'i' as separate vowel sounds - i.e. 'ah' and 'ee'. So what's the point in putting the two dots there but not using them?

I've watched the video and get that Ann-ay is just wrong. But all I hear is 'An ace' - all the other ways of writing it don't make any sense to me.

Have I fallen down a wormhole?! I swear I have read this exact thread before, down to the replies and everything. I'm not sure whether there's a glitch in the matrix or it's just a popular thread topic but I am very confused

Oh and those saying that the 80s advert said 'annay annay' - it's not uncommon to market a foreign product but alter the pronunciation of its name to make it easier for non-speakers of the original language.

They can pronounce it grockel if they like.

Everyone outside the family will pronounce it correctly with the ‘eece’ ending and she will spend her lifetime correcting them. If they want to call her Annay then it would be sensible to change the spelling.

That was to Mike ^^

Whilst I agree that it is there child you cannot say you are right just because you are their parent. That's not how names work otherwise you could call your child Hedgehog and say its pronounced Bill. A little extreme in my example but still basically the same concept. Names can be and are pronounced in many ways but you cannot just decide that you like the look of one name and make up a pronunciation that you like. Poor thing will spend years correcting people and will no doubt be calling herself Ana before she is a teen.

On a separate note as a teacher I have never met or taught an Elodie which was not pronounced like melody even a little French girl we had pronounced it el-oh-dee, how should it be pronounced?

My daughter was at school with a girl called Chryseis pronounced Sherice.

I have no patience with the idea that parents can call their child anything they like and the rest of the world is expected to just fall in and accept their idea of how it should be spelled/pronounced. Using a non-standard spelling/pronunciation is going to cause endless hassle and confusion, for your own child more than anyone else. Why would you do that?

it is people of a certain age who will say Annay, because of the perfume advert. I knew an An-ay-is at school, so it was very confusing to hear the advert.
IT is just one of those names. They are in for a lifetime of putting people 'right' . That is up to them.

I have an Amélie - I might be wrong but I say a-may-lie (not quite May but don't no how to write it - somewhere between May and meh!) and never a-muh-lie which is how most people who don't call her Emily by mistake pronounce it :)

*know! Sodding phone!