Everyone pronounces our daughter's name wrong

[StarShine23]

Hi all, advice needed please.

We named our daughter after someone we know from abroad. Its a pretty simple name but we had never heard it in the UK before. Baby is now 1 and the name has become more popular here, but it has a different pronunciation than we use. The problem we have is we don't like way its pronounced here, but everyone we meet now calls her by the UK version rather than her name, even though we correct them.

Do we:
(a) stick to our original pronunciation, even though it will be a battle for her growing up when other people with the same name all pronounce it the UK way
(b) accept the UK version, even though we dont like it and to us, doesn't suit her
(c) change her name

Has anyone else been through this? What did you do / wish you had done?

We feel awful that we have unwillingly picked something that is going to be tricky for her now all her life, but we love the name.

We had this. Our daughter has an Irish name spelt in a similar way to an English name but pronounced differently. I was annoying that she constantly had to correct people but now she is an adult she is quite proud that (in the U.K. at least) her name is special and memorable.

There was a cartoon called Daria in the 90s and she was Daahria so I think a lot of people my age would naturally gravitate to that.

its an awesome show if you’ve never seen it. Daria was my hero as a goth teen. 😂

No it's not. I have.an unusual name. People mispronounce it and misspell it constantly and I also get called by completely the wrong name. If I got upset about it I'd been in a constant state of unnecessary anger and frustration. It really doesn't matter in the whole scheme of things so it's not worth getting upset about. I have much bigger things to worry about!

Similarly, I also think that I am not the centre of everyone else's universe. People have their own shit going on and pronouncing my name correctly is probably (and quite rightly) way down the list of their priorities. I don't want to add to their mental load over something so unimportant.

I don't even correct people now unless I need to. Just let them go for whatever name or variation of a name they've picked! 😀

I would never say it to them. It’s a personal irritation that a beautiful welsh name is mispronounced, I feel the same about Seren and Rhiannon which are often butchered into something else, but I’d never say it to the person with the name. This is an anonymous forum where opinions on baby names are asked for

Haha! My friends husband is known as one name to us and another to his family, the wedding did feel weird using his ‘real’ name.

Is it esme ?

OP has referred to the middle syllable so it's at least 3 syllables.

I thought it was Ann-eye-eeese. Was only joking about Anus above but it sounds like you know someone fearfully close to that 😳🙊

If there's another name you like for your daughter, perhaps changing it is the sensible thing to do. Kids have so much to content with already, why give her more unnecessary burden. I know someone who has a fairly common name (spelling wise) but she insists that her name is pronounced differently, people generally humour her but do poke fun of it behind her back and we are talking about middle class, responsible adults here, imagine what kids would do... If you love the current name, you can always use it as her middle name (or one of the middle names) which would probably only be known to people who knows her best and care enough to pronoun it how it was intended.

One of my daughters is called Arianna. Her dad is Italian and the pronunciation is the Italian way (just pronounced as it looks, similar to Anna). British people often call her Ari-ahhh-na (with the sound in the middle that rhymes with car). Sometimes I correct them and sometimes I don't. For example her teachers and classmates and relatives know the correct pronunciation. People who we meet in passing who get it wrong: it doesn't matter. 👍

When I was at school and we were reading MND we read the name as Hel-ee-nah.

It's incredible how many different inflections one name can have.

I agree. I changed the spelling on my name to get it pronounced correctly, and years ago when it was pronounced incorrectly I hated the way it was said, but didn't lose sleep over it, and certainly didn't tie myself up in knots about it. In the grand scheme of things it really doesn't matter. I'm sure I mispronounce people's names myself.

I think it's a bit excessive to say you wont share the name in case it offends someone else who owns it OP? So...
I'll do one. My name is a variation of the name of 2 expletive enthusiast female rappers, one with a lot of attitude and one good track in 2011, the other does onlyfans. But spelt differently, in French. For a very ugly flower.
Guess the name? (this is genuine lol)

Yup, he said Ghee with a French accent. I've previously seen other English speakers explain that the French name Guy sounds like gooey; it seems quite a common attempt to transcribe the name.

It might well be as you say, I really am not sure.
ahnayus is very close to anus. Lol

Sorry, but there's only one way to pronounce Saoirse - Seersha (Sare-sha is wrong and so is Sor-sha). That AOI is always a long E sound in Irish.

Leonie?

I was talking with a friend about this today. She's Spanish and her son has a name pronounced the Spanish way and his TEACHER messed it up today. She was not happy about it.

Like PP said, it's one thing if some random gets their name wrong, but it's exasperating when it's someone who's supposed to know them well.

My name has only 4 letters. It is a real name but old fashioned. I got lumbered with it because my father misremembered his mother's name - she died when he was quite young - and registered me with the wrong name. I have spent decades spelling it as people always mishear it and to top it all off it's not a family name at all. I do wish it had been changed to my grandmother's real name which people seem to be able to spell easily and is a much prettier classic name. I think it's a bit too late for me to change now but if I was young I absolutely would do it. I would try very hard not to lumber a child with a name that they are constantly having to correct people about saying or spelling. I have a French surname and I have to spell that all the time too and sometimes even have to correct the pronunciation. If I think I'm never going to see them again, I don't bother and just let them mangle it and go with whatever wrong version of my first name they have settled on.

My friend is northern Irish (Belfast) and her child is called Saoirse. She pronounces it Sor-sha. Ive since heard other people say Seer-sha. There is definitely more than one way to pronounce it

A ! im sure it’s fine a friend has a simple name (Maxine) but some people just say Max eyene but she just gave herself a nickname Maxy

Just realised I have a few people in my life with names that people pronounce in various ways. Michelle (MishElle/Mee-chelle), Nadine (Na-deen/Nay-deen), Alicia (A-lissia/ Aleesha)

Sorry OP, but if you have chosen a name which has an established anglicised pronunciation then you can try to force your preferred pronunciation but it will be a battle.

A lot of the examples pp have given are simply mispronunciations, not established differing pronunciations between countries. This isn’t unique to the UK. You could name your child Catherine or David in France and request the English pronunciations but people would look at you askance and then call them cat-reen or da-veed regardless; it’s almost impossible to get an Italian to sound the English pronunciation of Lisa instead of their pronunciation lee-za.

It depends if it's charging the name (ie the Sara/Sarah type example) or just a case of accent. My dc both have names that are traditionally from continental European countries. They are pronounced differently there but also all over the UK depending on accent, (common with vowels). None of us have ever thought to correct anyone in the way you would with Sara/sarah when h are obviously different names. Without telling us the name we can't tell which yours is

Sounds like it's a language issue. Your child name is not of English origin, so the pronunciation is different. My colleague is French, gave her daughter a French name. She got annoyed that everyone mispronounced it. Well we're not French, and wouldn't know how to say it their way. She ended up changing the name. I think that's the risk you take with living in another country. My neighbour is Chinese and she's given her children very English names. She didn't want any problems with their names, which is very sensible.