I have a son who has a name that can be pronounced two different ways and one of the ways we really don’t like!
When I was pregnant and my husband suggested the name I was really against it initially as although I liked the name when it was said in the way we would pronounce it, I knew that people would probably pronounce it in the way we don’t like as that’s the more ‘typical way’ of pronouncing the name.
Eventually I agreed that we should use the name, but only on the premise we would spell it different to the ‘typical’ spelling so when written down it would look like how we wanted it to be pronounced. The spelling we chose is an accepted spelling of the name, it wasn’t anything weird and wonderful, it’s just a lesser used spelling.
We had great success in that his name has never once been pronounced in the way we didn’t like as the spelling of his name automatically leads to it being pronounced the way we want, but the problem we have is that whenever anyone writes his name down (upon hearing it) they still use the traditional spelling of the name and it drives me mad 😂
I can’t tell you how many birthday cards and Christmas cards we get with his name spelt incorrectly! He won a trophy a few months ago from his junior cricketing team and on his plaque his name was written incorrectly as it was spelt using the traditional spelling as opposed to how we spell it.
At one point I said to my husband that I found it so irritating that I wish we had just used the traditional spelling of the name as he’s going to have a lifetime of his name automatically being spelt incorrectly and him needing to correct people.
But on the flip side if we’d used the traditional spelling we’d all have had a lifetime of his name being pronounced in the traditional way (the way we don’t like) and he’d just be correcting them on that instead. So we couldn’t win either way!
Ultimately though, we are glad we didn’t ever change the spelling or the pronunciation because I think we would really have come to regret it.
I sympathise with your feeling bad about unknowingly putting this stress on to your child as I feel the same.
Mind you, I’ve got a really common name and there are 3 recognised spellings of it and I’m always being asked how to spell it, so things like this aren’t just specific to more rarer names.
Speaking from experience, I would keep your child’s name and pronounciation and as she gets older just make her aware that it’s probably an issue that she’s going to have deal with, but it’s an issue that a lot of people have to deal with regardless of what their name is.
She may actually really like having a more individual pronunciation as opposed to being one of 10 girls in the class with the same sounding name.
Although my son does eye roll every time he sees his name being written down incorrectly, he does love his name and he said he’d hate for it to be pronounced in the more known way, so that’s another reason why are glad we didn’t make any changes to the pronunciation or spelling.
Stand by your choice OP 👍