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.

....and in German .Caroline is in fact pronounced Caroleena .Really pretty name .

@booksandbrooks I don't really understand why mispronunciation is so upsetting.
Because it is.
If you are something like Caren and get Karen or 'Cairen', the name still sounds reasonably OK.
If you are Mirain and get called Mir-rain, Merryn , Merrion, Marian or Migrain you might mind

We had exactly this issue. We named our little girl after a place we lived abroad ELENA. The pronunciation there is Spanish Caribbean (Central America) Eyyy-Lenna. We just knew this wouldn’t work here, so we called her Elena and went with the regular pronunciation here Eh-le-nah as we knew she’d be forever annoyed at people saying her name wrong. We only call her by the correct pronunciation when she’s in trouble! But people still read her name and pronounce it as Eleanor, which is totally wrong! My fault 🤷‍♀️

@Cinateel , a lot of people don't really care about how you say it.
Other person: 'Coreen Smith?'
You: 'Corrin Smith'
Other p. 'Karen Smith. Oh, Ok'
You: 'Corrin'
Other p: [rolls eyes] 'Hello everyone, here's our new team member Coreen Smith'

Keep pronouncing her name the attractive way and the way you intended it to sound.
Just remind people whenever they make the mistake.
"It's XXNAMEXX, we pronounce it the Italian way."

Some people will remember and you are the ones who will use her name the most.

I say Elena ELL eh nuh, Ava AR vuh, and Deirdre DEAR druh, in ways that are not the most common pronunciation but I will not change because I personally know some women who have taught me to say their names.

We have a similar situation. We stick with our pronunciation and our child has come to expect people to pronounce it differently. Whilst they are happy to get on with it, they have a special bit of their heart reserved for people who bother to try to/remember to pronounce it as we do.

No one will be offended that you dont like it

I dont like Albert for babies, I dont like Peggy for girls, I dont like Bella for girls

Just say what the name is

@user1492757084 Keep pronouncing her name the attractive way and the way you intended it to sound.
Just remind people whenever they make the mistake.
"It's XXNAMEXX, we pronounce it the Italian way."

People don't like being corrected, and most don't care how you say it, so you just end up looking like that person.

But should you care about being "that person" when someone is so rude not to remember?

Is it Balonz?

Some people with the name Sara pronounce it "Saira". Who are you to tell them they pronounce their own name wrong? Get over yourself.

We have the same With our youngest daughter. To be honest it's not been too much of an issue, I just correct people the first time and then they remember how to pronounce it usually. What is annoying is when people tell us that we have pronounced it wrong and called our daughter the wrong name....(we haven't, it really is a different pronunciation from where my husband is from)

@Ceàrdaman , the correcting gets very tedious, and most will not not get it right anyway, and some will be downright rude.

Honestly, the confidence of some people that their particular view on the world is the correct one. The nerve required to tell a parent their spelled their own child's name wrong.

It drives me mad!! There is one particular relative who always smirks as he tells me how wrong I am

@solongandthanksforallthedish , some parents do spell the name incorrectly.
Look at how many Pheobes and Ruebens get registered.

The sort of comments I get are 'I know how to spell it!' (they don't)
or 'Why do you say your name is - when it's really - '?' (think something like Christabel and Christine)

And the word bird used to be 'brid'.

Languages and names change. If someone has named their child Pheobe, then they've chosen to name then Pheobe. To spell it Phoebe would be incorrect. Get off your high horse. (or 'hors' as it used to be spelled.) There is no list of correct names in this country, and people can call themselves what they like. You are not the naming/spelling/pronunciation authority. No one is.

It's about respecting others.

I have a French name with accents and everything It's also the same as an English name with a different spelling. My French family were really particular about the pronunciation but I couldn't give a fuck and most people don't even know so use the English.

I was going to use the name Lilla (like Lilith and Lily but with an ah) but knew it would forever be pronounced Lila (lye-lah) and didn't want to give DD a lifetime of not only having to spell her name as I have but also correct pronunciation for both first and last name so left it.

It really does depend on the name itself for the end decision but I understand why you wouldn't want to post it.

@solongandthanksforallthedish , did you mean to sound rude?

Maybe Pheobe and Rueben's names were spelt like that through the paretnts' choice, but they are not the traditional spellings of two old and popular names.

The origins of the words bird and horse aren't relevant to the thread.

That my name is frequently misspelled and that I get rudeness when I correct people is relevant.

Get off your high horse. is rude.

I am the authority on my name. It's my name and I have every right to mind when people get it wrong, or say it's something else, or make an impolite comment about it.

I thought Esme.

I have a French name that isn't unheard of here in the UK, not common but not rare by any means. People always mishear or call me the masculine version which is more common. Sometimes even saying the masculine version back to me when I introduce myself as though I've been getting my own name wrong my whole life 😆 The feminine version is the same with an e on the end and rhymes with Christine. I just correct and move on, and enjoy the Starbucks misspellings. Been happening since my school days but it's not a burden in any way, just correct and go forward.

Is it Amelie?

Just out of curiosity, How many different ways do you think people might pronounce the name Leonie?

I would stick with the original pronunciation. But allow for the possibility when she's older she may prefer the other.

I have a name that has a couple of obvious abbreviations, and is quite long, it's also got a couple of variations on spellings. My parents never shortened it.
I have a memory of being at the front in assembly when I was 5yo and correcting the teacher (to the older one's amusement) every time he called me by one of the abbreviations. It was never abbreviated until secondary, when I'd still introduce myself by the full name, but a number of people called me by one of the shortened versions. I never really liked that one though.
I've never worried about people spelling it the wrong way at all.
When I got to uni I starting being called by the other short version and since then I've always been that version and will use it for all except for my parents and official forms.
I now prefer it.

I think this is just an inevitable consequences of globalization and the sharing of names around the world!

In the past, people had much more limited names they used, and communities who all knew how to say them, even in my 1970's school there were just ordinary ways to say things.

Now, we have influences and knowledge of names from all over the world, and the names aren't all said the same. I have the most bog-standard name ever, never misspelt and never mispronounced in 35 odd years, then around 40, people started spelling it a bit differently! In my field, there's a famous (in my field) person who has the Danish spelling of my name and a lot of people use that, in fact, having gone from never ever having it spelt wrong, it is spelled now about four different ways (think Anna type name).

It's just the way is is now. People on here post threads that people get their name spelled wrong on paper (yes, because people hear it and assume what it is ) and said wrong in person (because there's so many different pronunciations depending on country). They are then upset/insulted/think others cannot be bothered and so on.

If you know you always say others names exactly right, and remember first time and never ever address an email or card to the wrong spelt name, good for you! Most people cannot do this and you should adapt to the world that is, not the one you ideally would like.

I have several Elenas in my life and there's three different pronounciations!

Pick the one you like, correct those nearest and dearest. Although even my dad said my husband's name wrong for 20 years...