How would you pronounce Brontë?

[Bronteeorbrontay]

Just that really. If you met a Brontë or Bronte, how would you automatically pronounce it?
Is it awful?
I quite like it. I always assumed it was Brontay but online I keep finding people are pronouncing it Brontee. I actually quite like both but I'd want to pick the one that is most commonly used.
We are not set on this name, but I've already got three kids and really struggling to find a name I don't associate with another child we know or a member of our huge family!

Brontee.

BRONT-ay

@SausageOfAmbiguity , Bronwyn is dreadful. Bronwen is OK.

I'd say Bron-tay like the writing sisters and I'd assume it was an homage to their literary genius.

bront - ay

Well, exactly.

Brontay (Brontee is awful)

Pronounced Brontay it’s ok but not what would pick personally

In what way would a name invented by an Irish man trying to distance himself from the ethnic prejudice and classism associated with his origins 'fit with Irish siblings' names'? Patrick Brontë's eldest surviving daughter had absorbed the prejudice so strongly that her representation of the Irish curate in her novel Shirley is deeply unpleasant and stereotyped, and, when she eventually married an Irishman, she was utterly taken aback to find, visiting his family on honeymoon, that they were comparatively genteel and not the raw savages she'd clearly been expecting.

I mean, it's not exactly a tribute, if it's important to you that your children's names have some kind of relationship to one another.

You could spell it Brontae or Brontay to lead people to how you want them to say it?
I would pronounce it as Brontay anyway.

I’m from Yorkshire, and I say Bron-tee

But they don't in my experience. It would only be Brontay if there was an acute accent over the e. The most that the umlaut does is show that it's not a silent letter, as in Noel when there is an umlaut over the e to show you down't pronounce it "Nole". If anything it should be Bront-e, i.e. just the e sound as in words like "egg".

Bron Tay

Brontay but I think it's a bit donkey to me. Braying Brontë

I love how lots of people are saying "like the sisters" but then choosing both "-ay" and "-ee". Goes to show opinion is split. I think it will depend on the speaker's accent. I would emphasise the 'Bron' and aim for 'Bronty'.

But Patrick was probably inspired to that particular anglicisation of his surname by his hero Nelson being made Duke of Bronte (an Italian dukedom, pronounced 'BRONT-ay'). He sometimes wrote it Bronte or Bronté. Juliet Barker suggests he might finally have settled on Brontë only because of a typo on the title page of his first book, but how he pronounced the second syllable ('ay' to rhyme with 'hay') is clear from the fact that he sometimes wrote it as 'Bronté'.

Bron tee

It gets worse.

Bron-tee for me. But I have a name that uses a ë so pronounce it in the same way.

I know of two Brontes
One I taught was Bron-tay.
One was daughter of my lecturer and called Bron-tee.

It's not an umlaut. The diacritical mark in Noël is a diaeresis - it indicates that the o and the e are enunciated separately.
An umlaut changes how the vowel sounds e.g, Mann -> Männer in German

Tay (Tay Tay Tay Tay t-t-t-t-t-tay tay take or leave us only please believe us we ain’t ever gonna be respectable). I’ll see meself out

I’ve only ever heard Americans say bron-tay, never bron-tee.

I don’t think either variant should be used as a first name though, OP.

I guess because the Brontë sisters had Irish heritage. It was also adapted from an Irish surname and their father was Irish. I'm not suggesting it's akin to calling someone a traditional Irish name.
I just don't want something very English or very linked to another nationality as it feels a bit jarring next to the other names.
I find this name and the history behind it quite interesting.
It seems perhaps the correct pronunciation based on the two dots, is Brontee. Maybe I should go with that, but it's only gone on the list today so I might scrap it altogether if we think it will cause loads of grief for her.

Wasn't it bespectacled? 😎

I'd look at the person and decide whether they looked more like a Brontay or a Brontee.