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.

DP often has her name mispronounced and misspelled and it's not even anything complicated. A lot of time she just lets it go, sometimes she corrects people, it doesn't seem to bother her.

DS has a name that a lot of people won't have encountered before and they can be unsure of it. We purposely chose the anglicised spelling to make things easier for him. Four letters, pronounced exactly as it's spelled, and I had no idea there could be so many variations when people give it a go 😂

Now he's a bit older he's more likely to correct people than his mum, but I know he likes having a name not many others have.

If I was you I'd stick with the name and pronunciation you've chosen.

It drives me mad when I get cold callers say "is that Annie ***?"
My name is Anne. Since when did having an E on the end of your name make you into Annie???

I just put the phone down on them. If you can't pronounce my name don't think you can speak to me.

You are not saying your own name wrong, and anyone who says you are is rude. You are the authority on your own name, as applied to you.

However, you should apply that to those who decide to spell their own name differently. Do unto others. Pheobe isn't wrong, it's different. Someone who has a name spelled, or said, the same as yours, but said, or spelled, a different way isn't wrong. Just different.

@HipHop63 I'm kind of with you, but I have Italian/Nordic students where the 'e' is pronounced at the end, so Danielle is 'Daniell-ea' or Louise is 'Louis-a' so this is something again that is coming from more international pronunciation.

Well they don’t. They’ve just always been told that is it, but Sara is a different name to Sarah.

But if they are pronouncing their name that way, then it is correct for them

It’s incredibly rude to tell people they are pronouncing their own name incorrectly!

@solongandthanksforallthedish , I wouldn't tell Pheobe nor Feebee that her name was spelt wrongly.

I know someone who had the baby's name registered with characters transposed. That was something like Cleo registered as Cloe.
If you want to think that Cloe pronounced Cleo is ok then think what you like.
The parents had the BC changed to the correct spelling.

Just correct them every time. A number of names have different pronunciations, eg Simone. I’ve heard it pronounced Si-MON (MON rhyming with the second syllable of ‘upon’) most of the time, but occasionally Si-MOAN.

Certainly don’t change her name! People will get the simplest name wrong. I have a very simple basic and common surname, but a number of people still manage to pronounce it wrong or misspell it 🙄

@ZebraPensAreLife , so if Inge has always said her name as Indge, would it be impolite to say you thought it was Ing-guh?

Yes. Because that may be the more common way to pronounce it, but it is not that person’s name!

I'm not saying the name, because I don't want to offend any one who is or has children called it and use the UK variant.

Eh? You don't want to offend anonymous strangers on the internet by saying you pronounce a name differently to them? What do you think they're going to do, track you down and harrass you? Stand outside your house with banners saying 'it's Clarr-rah not Clah-rah?'

You carry on pronouncing it your way, and if people pronounce it the English way, either correct them or don't, depending on how you feel on the day.

I have a very old, but relatively rare, English surname, and EVERYONE pronounces it wrong. I just shrug. They can say it their way, I say it my way.

I suppose it's a bit like the name Evelyn. Some people pronounce it eev-lynn, some ev-uh-lynn.

Except that I have a friend called Sara, pronounced Sarah 😀

This. DH has an unusual name and he hates it because every time he meets someone new it means repeating it several times then they still get it wrong. He’s mostly known by an easily pronounced nickname…
Does your DD have a middle name? Could she be known by that rather than changing her name which I’d imagine isn’t all that easy to do?

It’s not that easy to correct what your brain has learned as the right pronunciation, though. Like remembering to pronounce kettle as keetle when you are visiting a particular relative or something. You might learn it over time but it won’t be second nature.

So I can believe that someone who knew a Juliana (pronounced -arna) growing up would take a lot of thinking to pronounce it -anna if the spelling was the same.

I think a name that is unfamiliar in spelling in England would be more likely to trigger the “learning a new word now” neurons to cover pronunciation and spelling!

I was thinking Madeline so pronounced 'Mad eh lean'
Or Mad-Lin

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

Only if there actually were an "a" at the end of it. In German it's usually spelled Carolin or sometimes Karolin. I have a niece called Carolin.
Nobody has pronounced my name correctly since I moved to an English-speaking country 30 years ago except for the occasional German speaker and I don't really mind. Sometimes I'm fed up when people who have known me for a long time can't be arsed to spell my name correctly but most times I can't get worked up about it.

One of my daughters is called Helena which we pronounce with the emphasis on the first syllable. However many people try to say HeLAYna but once they have heard how you say it a few times, they tend to follow suit. I would stick to what you prefer

Oh, and she loves her name and has never mentioned that it is an issue for her in adult life (she's 35)

Obviously, if the parents or child think there is a mistake, then there's a mistake. Feebee is not a name I would choose, but I wouldn't say anyone was wrong.

I was christened Caoimhe ( Kee-va ) , after my maternal grandmother but it became a pain in the backside so I quietly dropped it in preference to my middle name. Only my mother uses my given name these days.

Did you use a yooneek spelling?

We have this with one of my kids (we use the European pronounciation of a name rather than English to reflect family background). It is absolutely a pain because we get quite ugly pronunciations from people sometimes, but we've learnt to roll with it. Was more careful with subsequent DC though.

I have a not very common name, that people who grew up with classical mythology stories, or know a certain actress's name get right. But people I come across in the NHS of foreign extraction struggle with it and go by what it looks as though it rhymes with. Think Percyfone - which it is not. I correct them gently. They will meet others, particularly of my sort of age because there was a film with Deanna Durbin in, and three of us in a class of 14 as a result.

Not the original poster but I know one white French Guy and one Ivorian-French Guy both pronounced Ghee.