"th" names a problem

[palmsandwine]

I may be over thinking this but has anyone ever been put off a th name because of the way people pronounce th as 'f'?

I never really gave it a thought until Stacey in Eastenders named her baby Arthur but he never got called anything other than arfff-ah

2 of my favourite boys names are Theo and Arthur. I also like Thea for a girl but I do worry about people calling him "Fee-oh." Anyone else think like this??

I am a chronic over thinker. I talked my way out of Rory because I worried in case my child struggled saying their R's. Lots of names have an R and i would still use them but I thought two R's would just be too irritating for a child with a speech impediment 😬

Yes! My mum does this and so did I (because my mum never corrected me) for a while and I had to train myself out of it as an adult. I like a lot of th names but I would just cringe every time I heard my mum say her name (I realise this makes me sound awful)

Yes I can't stand the th as f thing, it's likes nails on a blackboard. Thankfully we don't typically do it in Ireland but my partners brother does (not sure why, it drives me mad) and I couldn't bear having to listen to him saying Thea as Fea or whatever. I've ruled any Th name out just because of that.

I'm not keen on names with 'th' in them but it depends where it is, and what the other consonants are.
Theo and Thea - not keen.
Theodore is awful but Theophilus ok.
Dorothy ok, Dorothea and Theodora not ok.
Arthur - not keen, but it's nice in welsh (ARR-thirr)
Elizabeth and Ruth are fine.

Maybe it's just me.

Feo and Fea are awful.

Many can't or can't be bothered to pronounce TH correctly. Arfur and Feo are awful.

I also know quit few who really struggle with their Rs. So names like Rupert or Rory are a real struggle for them!

Both my DC have names with “th” sounds in them, and I’ve never heard anyone pronounce them with a “f” sound instead. I would just pick the name you like. Arthur is a lovely name. And Eastenders is (fortunately) not real life.

I have a name that I actually couldn’t say properly until I was in my late teens - took a lot of speech therapy to get there, and meant I used a nickname constantly until then! I did take that into account when choosing names - my children’s names don’t have R, Th, or S as I just didn’t want them to have the same issue.

I think if there’s an obvious nickname that you’re happy with then it’s ok to use a Th/R/S name though.

Theo and Thea are fabulous names imo!
I don’t know anyone who pronounces the ‘th’ as a ‘f’. I know many Arthur’s in my DC’s schools and their names are always pronounced correctly.
Just choose a name you like, not because of regional accents.. (or laziness when speaking, don’t mean to offend!)

I wish I'd thought about this before I'd named dd1.
It makes me cringe everything one of her friends yells Befffff

Feo and Fea are awful

Fia with an F is a lovely name.

My husband particularly hates the f for th sound yes and I do agree it would put me off choosing say Theo especially in an area where fick and fin is prevalent! It drives him mad ! He'll say do you say the ? Well then you can pronounce it properly 😂🤣he points out the Americans never do that - which you may notice now ! In a way it's ok for a cockney to do that because that's their regional
Accent but now so many other areas do it as well 🙈

Yes, we considered this. Arfa and Marfa are quite different to Arthur and Martha. We have family in the north-west and I'm not fond of the way that the regional accent renders names ending with an -ee sound into -eh, so we avoided these too.

Don't overfink it.

I went to school with a Caff. She didn't like being called Cath as she thought it sounded posh! It wouldn't put me off, but I can understand your concern.

I have a norf London accent. I avoided th and ph names.

Pity really as I have always loved Sophie for a girl.

Yep, I can’t pronounce th and it sounds ridiculous as my accent is very queen’s English otherwise, so I avoided it in names.

I have a teenage Theo and it has never been a problem although it could depend on your location!

I don't generally like names that begin with a 'th'.

It can be a weak, lispy sound like in Thea/Theo which I really don't like, or be mispronounced as 'f' depending on accent.

I don't mind it in the middle of a name, eg Arthur, Catherine, Dorothy.

I don't like it on the end of a name, eg Ruth, Keith.

My DD pronounces th as f, due to hearing issues she doesn’t hear any difference. It’s made looking for a name for this baby a lot harder. We liked heather but she said it as heffa and that put me right off.

God yes, awful to hear names massacred like that. Like people who say free instead of three. Awful.

I live in Yorkshire and I would 100% be put off a name because of it. In the same way I probably wouldn't use a name that started with 'H' as it just gets dropped so often near me.

My dh says f instead of th. It drives me crazy, so much so that he now says bird fur instead of feathers .
I liked Seth but no way with dhs laziness. He's not even a Londoner.

My favourite boy's name is Theo, and for my husband it's Arthur. Unfortunately, I can't pronounce "TH" to this day. Despite my sister trying to coach me our entire lives and determining that I'm lazy! I'm really not lazy! Free/three is really the bain of my existence!

However, if we have a son, my husband has already named him Arthur..... so he better get used to Ar-fuh? SORRY! :(

@ZebraKid71 yes to this! We’re South Yorkshire and really wanted to call DD Harriet until we told the in laws and FIL said - no I’m not keen on arriat 😭😭

God yes.
I’m 31weeks and have had to rule out all ‘th’ names due to DP’s inability to pronounce it properly.
His parents never corrected him as a child, so I’m trying to change 35 years of bad habits. It’s not working. But I could not bear him butchering a name with ‘th’ in it every time he said it.

With my accent I usually turn th in to f, but always make a conscious effort to say the th's in names because I don't like butchering names.

Where we live is the reason DS1 isn't called Xavier. When I suggested it, DH just called out "zzaaavvvviiyyaaaahhh" as that's how it would be shouted across the playground and I couldn't bear to hear that day in and day out.