No one can pronounce my baby's name!

[Bewilderbeastie]

Had my baby this year - decided upon a name which is definitely not common but (we thought) really not difficult. It's very short, two syllables, no special characters, nothing odd about how you pronounce it (it's very say what you see).

We both saw it, loved it, didn't consider people would she trouble with it... But they do! I've heard every wrong iteration of it. Even when we say what the correct pronunciation is, people continue to struggle?! We've been witnessing this with growing horror and worried now we've saddled our child with a name that will haunt them for life. Every time I hear someone say it wrong, I cringe inside. I can only imagine what it's going to be like for my LO.

It can be shortened even further, so that's an option. But it's not the name we fell in love with.

Any tips on dealing with this? Both my husband and I have very trad names so never had this ourselves. It gets a bit awkward to keep correcting people... Help!

I knew a lady called Sophia, and it was pronounced So fy a, with the fy rhyming with fly. Gosh, did she have a difficult time reminding people that it isn't the other more usual pronunciation! My son, who has SEN, insisted it must be said So fee a. Lovely lady ended up correcting others and saying 'Im afraid', after putting people on the right track. Both pronunciations of the name are lovely, so worth the hassle, I guess.

@dixiedo, with a non-welsh head on I'd say cad-ee as Cad Ee.. cf Jo-Dee and Jodie.

Aderyn?

I’m struggling to think of Welsh names that people commonly struggle to pronouce.

DD goes to school with a Bethan, Seren & Rhian and they all seem pretty easy to pronounce. There’s also several Cerys’ and Carys’ about. All very straightforward.

I have a two-syllable name. PIL cannot pronounce it properly, so use the derivative. The fact that they use the derivative doesn’t bother me as lots of other people do too (DH sometimes but not always). It’s the reason why they use the derivative that bothers me.

This all came about as they had said my name wrong for a few years, since DH and I got together. In the run up to us getting married, I told DH that my parents (when they were going to meet PIL for the first time) would think it was very odd if they heard them saying my name wrong, so could DH have a word. He did (I wasn’t there) and apparently got super embarrassed, said that my name was too hard to say so they’d use the derivative and they were sure I wouldn’t mind.

DSILs and now their partner and now their children (our nieces and nephews) now all use the derivative and it Really Bothers Me.

@CoffeeRunner., did you get Aderyn from a name site? It's just the word for bird. It really is an odd suggestion for a name. A bit like calling your baby Flighty.

@MikeUniformMike no, I admit I looked up the spelling because I didn’t know if it was an i or a y, but about 20 years ago we lived next door to a couple with two daughters called Bethan and Aderyn.

I had no idea it meant bird. I’m pretty sure that was the first time I’d heard Bethan as a name too .

She'll have to correct teachers at school all the time when they do the register. Especially at secondary school when they see about 6 different teachers a day and some will be student teachers and cover supervisors who won't know her name. I always felt sorry for the kids that had strangely spelt names that were easily mispronounced. Sorry but having worked in a school for 10 years, I made sure I named my kids with names that are recognisable.

I remember at school that surnames tended to catch teachers out.
The McSomethings or Roberts/Robson/Robinson/Robertson type mistakes.
Also, there were many incidences of very similar names or duplicated names, and that caused problems.

Carys, Cadi and Seren type names should be easy enough for teachers.

My next friends name is Julie. for some weird reason lots of people always call her Julia. No idea why

Best friend ! Not next friend...

@CoffeeRunner my friend's girl is Deryn (we are in Wales), it's a unisex name derived from Aderyn

@Bewilderbeastie, you seem to be experiencing a lot of anxiety.

I would suggest seeking to address this problem.

In the long run, your anxiety or frustration when someone mispronounces your DD's name will come to affect your DD. You need to show her an example of smiling insouciance when faced with people's attempts to say her name.

OP

Don't stress, people who care will make the effort, it might take time but they will get there.

I sometimes struggle with names, mix that in with working as a supply teacher, sometimes in areas with a high number of immigrants and occasionally on the Welsh boarder you can guess how often I've got names wrong.

There have been times when I have had 2 part time jobs and had the same spelling for different names in different places, eg Iona, Sian, Jose.

I have been known to do a victory dance when I have pronounced a name correctly on the third meeting.

NC for this!

My name is Rhiannon (one welsh parent; brought up in England). I don't even pronounce it properly, technically speaking, because I use an English /r/ at the beginning, not a welsh /rh/, but what really grinds my gears is people pronouncing it with an -un at the end, not an -on. I don't expect people to change their accent - I'm from the north, so I would expect a Fraaaancis from the south to put up with me calling them Frannncis - but English people are perfectly capable of saying /o/, even in non-stressed syllables. The reduction to schwa is a habit, not a necessity.

@StopSchwaingMyName, lovely name but Ree Annun isn't.
Rhee-ANN-on is much better.
(The Rhee is sort of Ree and Hee said at exactly the same time)
Fleetwood Mac song.

Angharad said as Ann Garrud or Ann Harrud is a pet hate.
Someone once asked me why his neighbour always used her surname instead of just Ann. He thought she was Ms Harrod.
The ngh is tricky - ng is one letter not two and there isn't a g sound to it. Ang-HAR-ad. The name was made popular by Demelza in the 1970s Poldark.

I can't remember who said it but Claire isn't pronounced Cluurrr in Merseyside. Unless you're Cilla Black who just made a joke of it.

It's said as Cler.

MikeUniformMike

Yeah, I know how to pronounce it. My dad's from Anglesey and my brother's name is even more welsh than mine is. I hate being called ree-ann-un. It just isn't my name. I say ree-ANN-on and I do expect people to do likewise. I don't do the welsh /rh/ because I'm not in Wales and it's not an English phoneme.

I doubt my parents would even know who Fleetwood Mac were, to be honest. My dad chose it because it's an ancient welsh name from the Mabinogion. It just happened to have the post Fleetwood Mac vogue at the same time!

You do, but others don't. It's nice and as you say a very old name.

I'd say Cler as Clur. Cilla managed to make it Clu-urrr.

Is it Efa?

It must be odd if you can’t reveal it.

I only spotted 9 Welsh girls names in the E&W Top 500 names:

Megan at 183
Seren at 196
Nia at 305
Ffion at 338
Mali at 373
Eira at 448
Rebeca at 472
Alys at 475
Ela at 480

So if the OP is outside Wales chances are that the name is sufficiently unusual to be outing if revealed.

This has the top ones in Wales: www.britishbabynames.com/blog/top-names-in-wales/#:~:text=The%20%231%20names%20in%202019,and%20Oakley%2C%20Lara%20and%20Mabel.

Megan and Seren must be quite popular in England. Neither are remotely tricky, are they?

OP isn’t going to tell you the name, folks. Over two hundred posts trying to wear her down.

She can't tell us the name because she's said the age of the DD (born this year) and that she's not in Wales, and that the manglings are making her cringe. She said the name is what you see is what you say.

If she said the name it would probably out her, or probably point to a handful of women.

I think she can either change it or persevere, or she and her DH and DD could move to Wales.

Anyway, OP I'm sure it is a lovely name for your little girl.