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!

It's really strange & surprising reading all these comments

As I mentioned earlier in the thread, I know a young Bronte. We didn't know what her name was going to be before she was born so when her parents announced her name it was a surprise as I had never come across a Bronte before. There has never been a problem with pronunciation as we copied the way the parents said the name

Bronte is now at school and, to the best of my knowledge, has never been called Bronte-saurus

I've heard one or two people say it's an unusual name but have never come across the very negative comments that some of the PP's have written, even when her name has been mentioned and her DP's haven't been present

Thanks, I have to admit I'm surprised by the extent of some of the comments!
I think we would drop the two dots over the e as it doesn't seem necessary and would just cause her problems. Same as if we used Esme I wouldn't put an accent there.

It’s good manners not to wade in with an ill-informed, incorrect statement without reading the thread in which several people have said what it is called and what it does.

I’d said (mistakenly) that it was an umlaut so I appreciated the explanation about the diaresis.

English doesn't have umlauts.
The languages that do use them are:
German
Swedish
Finnish
Estonian (borrowed from German), to denote specific vowel sounds.
Hungarian
Turkish
Sami languages
Other historical Germanic languages

(Source: Wiki)

The two dots in Brontë are trema.

Diaeresis (diacritic) - Wikipedia

It doesn’t have an é. It’s an ë.

The ë was added as an affectation by the Brontë sisters’ father, I think. It tells you to pronounce the E as a syllable, but not how to pronounce it.

The ‘real’ family name of the Brontës was Brunty, so I suspect they said Bront-ee rather than Bront-ay. But I don’t think we know for sure.

I have one, she’s 27 now (and loves her name). Spelt Brontë. We pronounce it Brontay but others pronounce in Brontee. She’s not bothered. Only thing that bothered me was when she was in school and some friends called her ‘Bron’ I really didn’t like that!

I strongly suspect that in Haworth, where they lived, the locals would have pronounced it 'Bronteh'. That's certainly the way we pronounced it when I was at school in south Yorkshire.

I don't know whether it's because I'm older or it's a regional thing, but I have never heard anyone pronounce the name of the authors as "Brontay." Everyone I know pronounces it "Bronty" - so that's how I'd pronounce it as a first name too, unless a specific owner of the name asked me to pronounce it differently.

Yes, the accent over the E just means it should be pronounced as a separate syllable, so Bronty not just Bront. It's telling you it's not silent like the E on the end of names like Browne.

Only in Sheffield

Fab, a mum of a real life Bronte! Glad to hear she likes her name. Did you often get asked if you were Bronte fans?
Did you ever use any nicknames for her? I can see how Bron isn't great, but not too offensive either.

Bront-tay

I said the same further up! The difference between my Barnsley accent and accents from Doncaster/rotherham/Sheffield is immense! My friends who live in mexborough have a very noticeably differing accent to the people in Denaby which is less than a mile away and both in Doncaster!

Its Bronty btw!

They changed it from Prunty. But I dont think you want to name your child that.

That's why I posted it!

They stop it being Bront.

They don’t. They have no effect on the pronunciation at all. That ë and ï are for some originally foreign words with two vowels next to each other, but they are largely dropped nowadays -eg: naïve, Zoë, Chloë. They are purely an affectation to make the name look more interesting in a yooneek way.

Bront-eh

They're a dieresis and they indicate that the vowel they are over is not silent, in other words it's pronounced as a separate syllable.

@ChocolateCinderToffee , A diaeresis indicates that the vowel is to be enunciated separately from the adjacent vowel, e.g. pingüino, naïve, Citroën. The examples would be pronounced pinggeeno, nev and sitroon without the diaereses.

In Brontë, they are just a diacritical mark.

The Brontë sisters' father adopted the name and added the diacritical mark.

Bron tea

bur it’s a surname op.

Chloë would be pronounced Cloe without them.

Clo to rhyme with Flo
Most of the many Chloë I know get called Chlo.

Bron-tay

I say the sisters name as bron-tee so would probably pronounce it the same
(I am from Yorkshire)