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?

She'll probably call herself Em when she gets tired of correcting people.

I'm surprised that your surprised this is happening 🙈
Kids in for a lifetime of correcting people and having to spell her name out constantly, poor child

Dropping the i doesnt make the name special unique or different it literally still sounds the same as Emilia (which is a very common and boring name ) only it sounds like a kid that can't talk properly yet is saying it . I honestly don't know why parents do this to their kids are you actually Italian OP?

It is a name in its own right of Italian descent apparently but even Google ai was reading it as Emilia 😂😂

I have an Amelia and lots of people say E instead of A and my biggest pet hate is when they say Amelya so I'd expect for them to say Myla instead of Mila if you did

Then half the people here who would say Emilia would also say Emillia

it’s just silly reading honestly. Being a “native speaker” has nothing to do with the fact that people can’t pronounce a name correctly

@Portugal1987 , you are rude.
Half the people on here probably don't say Emilia as Emillia.

What is the correct pronunciation (of Emilia)? Is there one?

Whether or not you are a native speaker does make a difference, as does whether or not you speak more than one language?

Genuine answer: it's just how my brain pronounces what it sees on the page. I do not automatically see the 'i' being pronounced as 'eeee' but more, the other two ways - a mere, 'say what you see' and I see Miller or M-eye-ler, Meela would not not occur to me.

In the words of Fawlty Towers' Manuel: ¿Que?

Neither of those names are familiar to me. Seeing them written, my brain would pronounce Miller Kunis (the 'u' as in cushion, and the emphasis on Ku) and Miller Jov-oh-vich (emphasis on 'oh).

It’s lovely but I’d change it to the phonetic spelling else the poor soul will have it all her life. My maiden surname was Wann (rhymes with Swan) but it was always whan/waaaa nnn at school or at medical appointments, people thinking I was Chinese etc.

Milla Jovovich is MEE-la YOV-ov-itch
I thought it was Mill-uh Yov-O-vitch

@WhitePudding , the name is written phonetically, in the same way as Anita or Marina are phonetic.
The problems are caused by the name looking so similar to Emilia.

Tricky one, if it were me I’d maybe see what she prefers when she’s older? I say that because my name is Sophie but my parents and friends who know my parents, particularly from primary school who I’m still in touch with call me “Sophs.”

I don’t mind “Soph” and I’m known as that at work, but for some reason “Sophs” irrationally annoys me when I’m summoned with it and I’ve just never said anything 🤣

You do know that the name Emily exists in the UK and is pronounced Eh-mill-ee (or eh-mil-ee in fact as mil and mill can be homophones)?
It is not pronounced Eh-meel-ee with the same 'mil' sound as that in Emilia.

See video below about how to pronounce the word Emily:
m.youtube.com/watch?v=YXQb4w4wG0k

As a further example, the word military is not pronounced with the syllable 'mil' pronounced the same as the 'mil' in the word Emilia?

I could go on... but do I really need to? I am a native speaker and fully understand that the different pronunciations of 'mil' that are available to me.

Once again.
I read Emila as Eh-mill-ah
I do not read it as Eh-meel-ah and I do not read it as Eh-meel-ee-ah.
Once more portugal1987, when I say read it as, I am referring to the pronunciation.

Hopefully you will finally be able to understand this. If not, I suggest a conversation with a native speaker about this topic would be helpful to you.

It’s hard to grasp as English speakers do not pronounce an i as an e.

They do in unique but it's a word borrowed from French.

*baby’s name

@LovingLimePeer ,I think this sort of attitude crops up a lot on here.
For some reason, it offends posters if you point out that a mother-tongue speaker will have a different understanding of the sounds, compared with someone who learnt later, however fluent they may be.

If everyone is getting it wrong you either think everyone in the UK is dim, OR it might be that it’s just not a name people are used to seeing.
I would have said Em-mil-uh
Then I looked it up and see it’s the feminine form of Emil so would then pronounce it Em-mee-luh

I read Emil and the Detectives as a child and assumed it was EH-mill, so would say Emillah.

I would have pronounced it Em-ill-a.
If you make up names you have to put up with people not knowing how to pronounce them.

My point is that she doesn't realise how much she's going to make her child suffer.

Apparently it’s a Polish name, @KnickerlessParsons - the female form of the male name Emil - so not ‘made up’.

I had that with my daughters name Alicia. Which is quite common but Including close.family members pronouncing and even spelling it wrong ..we just persisted not always correcting people but eventually they got it. ..

It’s one of those things I think.
my little girl is Lorelei. It’s pronounced loruh-lie but she’s often mispronounced as Loruh-lee. it’s mainly at the doctors more than anything. Grinds my goat but there’s not really anything I can do.
I just drop her name back in pronounced how it should be at any given chance