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.

This - giving someone who may struggle a way to remember it is so helpful. I know others dismiss people who do struggle to remember as stupid (ah, lovely lovely MN ignorance), but for some it is a struggle.

The irony of calling people who are using the legitimate local pronunciation ‘stupid’ and then completely misspelling Aoife.

Names get pronounced differently around the world or even different parts of the country and may even have a humorous meaning in another language. Just ask those close to her to pronounce it properly, it's all you can do.

My name gets shortened all the time by people I don't know well and I tend to use the full version, it's just because people already know someone with the short version. I decided life is too short to be bothered about it.

I got caught out when calling the register a couple of times.. After a number of Arun's, Arran's, and similar, I got Aaron, which I pronounced as in church readings of Moses' brother, to be shouted down by the class. I got so bothered by a succession of these that I consulted a Jewish friend, and confirmed I was right originally, but not when people had named their son after Elvis' middle name. And I got Michelle whose father was Italian misgendered at first.

Shameless thread derail from me but is your username related to the one at Binsey?

good spot

take note @Ottersmith 😂

oh and @ZoyaTheDestroyer did you note the little dig at “boring” names?

I knew a Niamh. Everyone here (England) used to call her ‘neev’. She ‘corrected’ the pronunciation every time: it should be something more like ‘nee-av’. Fuck me it was pointless and tedious.

It wasn't pointless to her obviously @WhatsTheUseOfWorrying.
Could you not have given it a go?

That’s sort of the point really. People who insist on a ‘proper’ pronunciation of a name - whether it’s an unusual name or a variation on a spelling or a name pronounced differently in a different place - are pointlessly expecting the world to change for them.

If I go abroad and people pronounce my name as they expect to, or even if they use a local equivalent (like Marie for Mary), I just accept that’s how it is.

you must have spent a lot of time with her to witness all these numerous times?!

I think you mean unwittingly rather than unwillingly 😏

I mean, I wouldn't expect everyone to change of course, @WhatsTheUseOfWorrying, but it would be nice for friends and colleagues to use her preferred pronunciation surely?

"Pronounced exactly as you would read it" is such a nonsense phrase.

American English doesn't have the English short A sound so, as you say, they would pronounce it exactly as they would read it i.e. Daah-ria.

Think of how different accents on the UK would pronounce the name Jane or the final syllable in Ricky or Nicky. None of them are saying a different name, or saying it wrong, they're just pronouncing sounds in the way their accents pronounce those sounds.

My Yorkshire relations and my London relations pronounce my own name differently. I don't tell them off!

Well, in this case there's the right way and the wrong way I suppose.
Look, it's her child's name and she can choose to pronounce it whatever way she pleases, but sor-cha is not how the word saoirse is pronounced in any dialect of Irish (it's a word in Irish not just a name).
Some people do get it wrong and there is another Irish name Sorcha (pron Surr-i-cha) that seems to get mixed up with it. It is harder if you don't speak Irish - don't know about your friend but less likely in Belfast.

I have a name that is said very differently by french people as they have a version on if, when i worked with french company i just accepted how they said it , was no big deal. Also some people whose second language is english often don’t pronounce it fully correctly but again i don’t have an issue as i probably with an english accent don’t always get their name spot on depending n pronunciation. Accents sometimes make it more difficult

My name has been, frequently, mispronounced all my life (and I'm now twiddly umpty five!)
When I was at school, there were several girls with the other version of my name and I remember saying to my Mum that I wished she'd called me that! She told me I was so very special, I had to have my own special name! I loved that so to this day (many, many moons later) I correct people and my family correct people on my behalf (often with the added message that they don't want me to thump them if they continue to pronounce it incorrectly! 🤣)
I still have friends who spell it incorrectly but pronounce it correctly.
Tell her how special she is to have her own pronounciation and I'm sure she'll embrace the difference 😀

You make it sound like it will be a massive issue. Plenty of names like naomi, Aaron, Lyla have this issue.

It's not like every day she will be correcting people. She will introduce herself to people verbally most of the time, it'll just be registers at school and maybe people over email until they meet her. Really not a big deal

I agree @PopandFizz
It's not an issue unless you want it to be one.
I have an unusual name that people mishear, sometimes obstinately. Haven't got the the fucks to give.

I had one person in my past who called me 'Ivanhoe' as that is what she thought she heard and she got stuck on it.
I just answered to it. Made me laugh.

@AelinGalathynius Élodie is more El-o-dee in French, with pretty much equal stress on the syllables, like LOD. In English, it sounds like Melody without the M.

@WhatNoUsername , just because it doesn't bother you doesn't mean it can't possibly bother me.
I'm not that bothered if they get the name slightly wrong but I am bothered if they pick something ugly, old fashioned or masculine, or if they are downright rude.
I don't particularly get upset about it but it can be a PITA.

@mathanxiety , the Seer-sha pronunciation is confusing because it looks like it's See-uh-sha. I'm not sure how to improve on it - SeeR-sha maybe.

@TeabySea , I was listening to a radio discussion about a Shakespearean play, and was surprised to hear VI-uh-la and Ma-ree-a, not Vi-O-la and Mar-EYE-a.

@TwirlBar , is not how the word saoirse is pronounced in any dialect of Irish (it's a word in Irish not just a name).
I agree with you. Names like 'Fleugh it's French for flower' or 'Serrun - it's star in Welsh' makes me want to say 'Not said like that it's not'

@WhatsTheUseOfWorrying , I quite like the way Scandinavian and German people say my name. I say Niamh as Nee-uhv.

@DuchessOfSausage Shakespeare played pretty fast and loose with stresses and pronunciations - the names fit the metre rather than the other way around! In lines like 'And died that day like Viola from her birth' it has to be pronounced with two syllables, VI-la, to make the line scan, but in 'That I am Viola; which to confirm' it needs three syllables, more like VI-o-LA!

@ZoyaTheDestroyer , VI-o-LA?

@DuchessOfSausage in that line, yes. In order for the line to scan in iambic pentameter it needs three syllables with the stress on the first and the last.

@ZoyaTheDestroyer , I hear it as VI-o-la in the example.
I say Juliet as 2 syllables, but 'And yet, Juliet' as 'And yet, Jool-y-et'