Everyone is getting my baby's name wrong

[Laura3091]

So my baby girls name is Emila - It is pronounced as Em-ee-la.

Everyone keeps calling her Amelia and can’t get their head around Emila. Don’t think it’s that hard to grasp tbh but I know she is going to have trouble as she grows up with people mispronouncing her name.

Do we just shorten it to Mila? (Mee-La) to make it easier for everyone?

This is basically what happened to me too. Also agree that it's easy to miss the second 'i'. Loads of people's brains will do that thing where they see most letters and then fill in the gaps based on their knowledge... which won't be of the name 'Emila'.

Emila is a pretty name but yes, so close in sound to very popular Amelia/Emilia and in look to Emilia/Emily that I would have thought it would be obvious that if you are UK based there would be issues 🤷‍♀️ It happens with lots of names that have very similar sounds - peoples brains usually default to the sounds they hear most often, it’s just something you have to consider when naming a child.

Thanks to people like Mila Kunis, Mila is now a Top 50 name so you could easily use the nickname Mila for her and I think most people would know that it’s usually pronounced “Mee-la”. BUT similar Mia is Top 20 and has been for years, so you will probably get a few people calling her that instead 🤣

Look it’s just something you have to live with - just like Lila/Layla/Lyra, Milly/Lily, Ellie/Elsie/Ella, Eva/Ava, Ada/Ayla, Evie/Ivy… we could be here all day as about a third of the girls Top 100 names sound like each other! The girls themselves mostly don’t seem bothered and the parents have to learn to let any annoyance about it go as well.

Just remember if you do have another DC to consider all the soundalike names as well as how popular a name is on its own. Your example of Olivia doesn’t really have many soundalikes (apart from Olive which is much less popular in comparison)- so it actually feels less well used overall imo than it actually is, simply because the sounds stand out more.

Go with what you like, OP, but I just wanted to say that I really like Mila (although people are still likely to pronounce it 'wrong', as in Mia).

Is it better though, when she will potentially go through life being called Amelia and having to correct it? Is Amelia more or less boring than Olivia, and how boring is it going to be to make the same corrections repeatedly over several decades?

Soon enough she’ll be telling people what her name is.
I would’ve read it out as em - ih - lah
Mila is a really cute nickname too.

Mill-uh? M-eye-la? Me-la? It doesn’t help.

Did you honestly not see this coming OP?

I'm not one for far out there names but I actually think it's really nice and pretty. You'll have to correct people a lot but once people know they'll learn it fine. Only shorten it if you actually want to use the shortening, otherwise use the full version and let her choose when she's older

Ugh how annoying. That line on thinking it often trotted out to minorities who have ‘different’ and ‘difficult’ to pronounce names that reflect their religion or culture, should they all change them to conform too?

If their name looks like a mispelling of a very popular name in the country they live in, then yes.

Poor thing, a lifetime of having to spell and tell people how to pronounce her name, just pick a better name before it’s too late!

@LakieLady I know a Beate. She's not german, and her name is Beh-AT-eh, but everyone seems to say Bey-ah-ta.

That’s awful and pretty racist/ xenophobic I’d say

we have slightly different spellings that mean different names, Sara and Sarah for instance

@commonsense61 , how many Myrddins do you know? None were registered between 1996 and 2023.
Merv is usually Merfyn or Mervyn.

@Panicpanicpanicpanik ,Sara and Sarah are from the same origin.

But they are still different names pronounced differently

@Panicpanicpanicpanik , they usually are, but either can be pronounced like the other one.

All the more reason to learn how to pronounce people’s names? I’m unclear the point you’re making?

my children have Muslim names, people do struggle even though ostensibly they are very simple names, should I change them to make them more amenable to white brits?

I think it’s a lovely name, not one I’ve heard before. People will call her Emilia though for the rest of her life!

@Panicpanicpanicpanik , Sara can be said as Sarah, and Sarah can be said as Sara.

my children have Muslim names, people do struggle even though ostensibly they are very simple names, should I change them to make them more amenable to white brits?
That's a goady question and not relevant to the thread.

Amilah - that’s how you spell it if that’s how you want it pronounced.

Yes exactly Sarah/ Sara can be pronounced either or BUT underlying the point that names have different spellings and different prononciations

well the whole, the name is too difficult to pronounce malarkey is often trotted out for people with names that are ‘too foreign’ plus someone (not sure if it was you, cba to check, said that someone from an ethic background that gave a child a name from their religion/ culture should change their child’s name if it was too similar to a British name to avoid confusion… so sorry I think it is relevant to that specific comment

So we should all call our children generic names to avoid confusion?
I have a difficult name to spell/pronounce but it certainly hasn't ruined my life 🙄

Yes, shorten it to Mila.

You'll find people pronouncing it My-la though.

Or add an H to the end as a pp suggested - Emilah

But if she did that then that’s an Arabic name,

that’s em-mill-ah

Personally I'm not sure wanting an unusual name for the sake of it like OP is comparable to choosing a name from one's own minority cultural or religious background. Speaking as someone who did the latter.

But in any case, if you choose a name from a minority group, there is at least a built in constituency of people who'll be familiar with it. OPs daughter won't even have that!

@Panicpanicpanicpanik , well the whole, the name is too difficult to pronounce malarkey is often trotted out for people with names that are ‘too foreign’ plus someone (not sure if it was you, cba to check, said that someone from an ethic background that gave a child a name from their religion/ culture should change their child’s name if it was too similar to a British name to avoid confusion… so sorry I think it is relevant to that specific comment

That would not have been me.

If the child had a 'foreign' (or a non-foreign) name that was almost certainly going to make the child's life a misery, and by that I mean something like the same name as a mass murderer, then yes, I might recommend changing it.

I would not recommend that OP changes her child's name, the name is OK, but had she asked on here before registering her child's name, I would have pointed out that it was likely to be mispronounced and misspelt.