Should we use an accent when spelling our baby name Renee?

[TheCleverMember]

Thank you to everyone who helped with our previous post.
We are now going to spell it
Renee

We are now debating whether to put accent on or not now
We want it to sound Ree-nee
We know the French pronunciation is ruh-nah and we do have french blood in the family.

Renee is pronounced Ruh-nay, not Ree-nee. The Ruh-nay pronunciation would occur with ot without the accent. It's a familiar name and people know how it's properly pronounced, with or without the accent.

To get Ree-nee, as a nickname, you might consider Irene on the BC, which is often pronounced Eye-ree-nee (though also pronounced Eye-reen).

There is no way I'd ever consider pronouncing Renee 'Ree-nee'. That first E is a short E.

Renee was never a diminutive of Irene. Reenie was, and it wasn't spelled Renee.

Renee is a completely different name, meaning reborn (in a spiritual sense). It's been a name for hundreds of years as has its masculine version, Rene, (also pronounced Ruh-nay). I can't do accents on my phone - both names have the accent on the second E.

The point of an acute accent is that it changes the pronunciation to "ay".

If you want people to say Reenee, spell it that way or call her Irene and hope for the best!

Accents are a pain in the arse to type on a UK/US keyboard, and this thread demonstrates the confusion that will follow her through life.

Ren ay is how I would pronounce it with or without an accent.

Never came across Ree nee as a name

@mathanxiety Renee was never a diminutive of Irene. Reenie was, and it wasn't spelled Renee.
Not true.

Yeah, I immediately thought of indigestion tablets!

While that's technically true, like lots of diminutives, in practice people spell them in all kinds of incorrect ways. I have not one but two aunts by marriage whose birth cert name is Irene, both known as 'Reenie' rhyming with 'meanie', but one spells it 'Rene' and one Renee'. But pronounced 'Reenie' in both cases. I've also come across it on RIP.ie and elsewhere.

I assume an older version of my other pet bugbear, 'Aoibheann' pronounced 'Ayveen'. Or indeed Cáitlín pronounced 'Kate-lynn'.

Sorry but I don’t understand why you would choose a French name but not want it pronounced in the French way. The second syllable of Renee rhymes with say (think of the word matinee). Adding an accent would just make it even more certain to be pronounced like that (that’s the whole point of the accent).

If you want to pronounce it Reenee, to rhyme with tree, I would spell it Reenie or maybe Renie, or you are setting the poor child up for a lifetime of correcting others.

People call their children Amelie, Claire, Elodie, Genevieve, Ottilie, ...

But those names aren’t then deliberately pronounced completely differently in English from how they are pronounced in French.

Edit: actually, Genevieve is. But it has been an established English name for a long time now. Renee, pronounced Reenie, hasn’t.

The way you have spelled it isn’t the way you want it pronounced.

Rene
Renee
Renee (with accent - sorry my English keyboard doesn’t have an accent)

all pronounced the same way.

Depends which accent. You could use Rēnee which would indicate your preferred pronunciation, but I think a lot of people still wouldn’t get it.

I’d spell it Rinie, Reenie or Reeney to get the pronunciation you want.

If you really like the pronunciation
Ree-nee I would go for the spelling Reenie or possibly Reeney - it might reduce any confusion.

There was an English football player (played for Leeds Utd) called Paul Reaney, pronounced Ree-nee, perhaps you could use that spelling?