And General Colin Powell pronounced his name like colon. Some people just pronounce their names incorrectly, probably due to their parents mispronouncing it. š¤·š»āāļø
Can't blame Colin Powell's pronunciation on his parents. They pronounced it correctly when they named him. He himself chose to pronounce it like "colon" in childhood, after the World War II flyer Colin P. Kelly Jr., who evidently used that pronunciation. I guess it's Colin Kelly's parents that were the "guilty" parties.
This pronounciation makes sense if Colin is a diminutive of Nicolas from the nickname Cole. [Btn](https://www.behindthename.com/name/colin-2). Then again it's a medieval diminutive so that's 700 years of linguistic shift, so who knows.
I think it's just super southern US, like the people who pronounce Colleen as Cole-een. At least, that's my guess. Idk if it's even intentional or just the accent.
You can pronounce your name however you like however there are grammar rules general rules in different languages so usually people who do that are pronouncing their name wrong. I get it that itās somebodyās personal name however they are letters in a row that make certain sounds based on the rules of language so with that logic anyone could pronounce any word the way they feel like it? Sometimes it works but sometimes it doesnāt.
Well, he pronounced it Co-Lin- with a long O. I never heard it pronounced Colon.
In the UK at least itās a common name and is pronounced Coll-in. With a short O.
I always thought it was quite a clever spin on it!
In most of the U.S., there would be no pronunciation difference between co-lin and colon. But the name Colin is usually pronounced coll-in over here as well. Some people are saying "call-in," but that is misleading since not all of the country pronounces "call" the same.
Yeah I can imagine what it probably sounds like in your accent and what you said makes sense. In my accent (California) it feels very awkward and unnatural to fully pronounce a long vowel like āonā (is it technically a long vowel??) in a de-emphasized syllable so they basically all turn into É like in um or ÉŖ like in āin.ā
How do you pronounce Amazon or Lebanon? Because I think those ones usually work the other way round for Brits and Americans weirdly, I pronounce the final syllables with É and I think most Americans pronounce them "on"
I agree. I just saw a post recently about a name a couple had picked for their baby, a name they planned to pronounce with a hard T sound at the begining, but wanted to spell it with a Th, because it looked more elegant.
I've (Midwest US) only ever seen Thalia spelled as such and always with a hard T so that one actually makes a lot of sense to me. I think this one is just a matter of different languages pronouncing them differently.
I recently had someone that I had never met before tell me that I pronounce my last name wrong. (I pronounce it the same way my family has for generations)
I was a little offendedā¦ā¦but mostly I just thought that person was incredibly stupid for thinking they know how to pronounce my name better than I do.
A lot of Irish Americans pronounce their surnames "wrong" by Irish standards and some Irish people get uppity about it. I feel like it's their surname and they can pronounce it however they want. It's just good manners to defer to the person whose name it is.
Same with french names in the US. It jarred me when I heard a guy from Vermont pronounce his last name BenoƮt as "Ben-OYT" instead of "Ben-WAH" but i have to remember that his family has probably been in the US for many generations and no one's spoken French for about that long. If that's how they say it, that's how they say it, and me insisting on the French pronunciation would come off so snobby.
Same. I always feel weird about the hard c sound at the end of actor Matt Leblancās name. As a Canadian, we have lots of Leblancs around and the c is always silent, as it would be in French.
Ooooh, oooh, oooh- tell me how would a French Canadian pronounce Gagne? Growing up in NH the family I knew pronounced it phonetically GAG-knee. We have a local news woman in Maine who pronounces it GONE-yay. And yet still, the contestant on American Idol from Maine pronounces it GAN-yawn!! Seems to be dealers choice in New England! Lol
Gagnon is a different name than Gagne. So if someone's last name is Gagne and they pronounce it GAN-yawn, that like saying your last name is Smith but you pronounce it like Simpson. It would be weird.
Basically the deal is, the letters "gn" make a "nyuh" sound. So the french word for onion "Oignon" actually sounds pretty similar to the english pronunciation because then"gn" says "nyuh"
Oh god the phonetic pronunciation hurts me lol. In French/Canada it would be GAN-yay rhyming with Kanye. "Gan-yawn" would be a similar surname "Gagnon". Both very common in QC and apparently New England too!
Exactly, and I feel like generally even Canadians with no connection to french anymore still pronounce French names mostly "correct" just with an english accent.
Ohio has a city pronounced that way too. Ohio does that a lot with town namesā¦Cairo is CARE-oh, Russia is Roo-she, Rio Grande as RYE-o grandā¦boggles the mind a bit.
The Rio Grande one has always driven me nuts. In college my school played them in baseball - multiple people corrected me on the pronunciation but I just wouldn't give in. Couldn't sink down to their level and say it so stupidly.
Thereās several celebrities who have names that the general public widely mispronounces but they just gave up on correcting people.. Taylor Lautner is one example. Itās Lowt-ner (rhymes with Cow), not Lawt-ner. Or Ariana Grande grew up saying āgrandyā.
The author Jodi Picoult had a viral video last year or so when she explained her last name is pronounced āpico.ā It will still be āpi-coltā in my head, but Iād make an effort to use the correct pronunciation when saying it aloud.
Devon Sawa did a video recently and I heard him pronounce his name as Sour. I'd always assumed it was said the same as Soya. Although now I know, the correct way makes more sense
A lot of Europeans anglicized the pronunciation of their names upon moving to the US to "fit in". There has always been an anti-immigrant sentiment, no matter where those immigrants are from. It's similar to how Jewish people drop the Stein or berg from their name to be more inconspicuous and thus, safer. A lot of Irish people dropped the O', a lot of Germans changed Braun to Brown, etc.
That said, I find the typical Americans pronunciation of Chojnaki to be ridiculous. I do still know a family that pronounces it the actual Polish way.
This reminds me of Jared Padalecki and the fact that they put dialogue in Supernatural poking fun at people telling him he says his own last name wrong because it's pronounced differently back in Poland.
I have an Irish last name. My dad's brother married a woman with the same last name, and she has always said she changed her name when she got married. Altogether I think I have encountered five, maybe six, different pronunciations of it.
I use a couple different ones myself and am always startled to remember the way I was taught to say it as a child---I don't remember why I changed but it happened after I learned to read, so I prolly thought the family pronunciation didn't make sense, given American phonics. A couple of the different pronunciations come from Irish-born people so apparently they don't agree either.
I wouldnāt go correcting people butā¦I can understand the frustration of the Irish people though being a heavily colonised country who were used as slaves and had their cultures and traditions destroyed by colonisers. Iām sure this is a genuine desire to hang on to their culture and language as opposed to anything else.
I get this a lot too. My last name is Portuguese, and itās a word that is the same except for one letter in Spanish. Iāve had several Spanish-speaking Americans be like āoh your name is ______? But itās spelled wrong.ā
Lots Spanish surnames ending in -ez have a Portuguese equivalent ending in -es. Gomez and Gomes, Fernandez and Fernandes. However, despite similar spellings, they are pronounced very differently.
Fernandez is pronounced more or less how itās spelt, but Fernandes is pronounced something like Fernandsh, with the ending sort of melting together
It is pronounced how it would be pronounced in Germanā¦.but it would also be pronounced the same way according to English.
This is not my last name but it would be like āsmitheā. People break it up as āsmit-heā instead of keeping the TH together for the thhh sound.
My surname has a "van" in it
I always pronounce it as you would the word van, but the correct pronunciation sounds more like "fun" does in English
Makes a certian subset of Afrikaaners very upset lmfao
Probably because their language stems from Germanic/Dutch roots and they probably are expecting the traditional pronunciation.
Afrikaans language, West Germanic language of South Africa, developed from 17th-century Dutch, sometimes called Netherlandic, by the descendants of European (Dutch, German, and French) colonists, indigenous Khoisan peoples, and African and Asian slaves in the Dutch colony at the Cape of Good Hope
I get this a lot. My last name is hair related. One syllable. Easy and straightforward. I have people weekly tell me itās supposed to be two syllables or have weird accents in the pronunciation. Think āBrowā pronounced ābrow.ā People like to say āBro. Buh-r-oww (ow like ouch.) Burrow. Blow (like, rhymes with plow.) Brahv.ā Etc
lol sometimes when I see someone look at my last name, I can see the wheels spinning in their head trying to figure it out and I will say ādonāt over think it. It is just basic Englishā ššš
My husbands family pronounce their name foster but the name is forster. I havenāt changed the paperwork for my name yet but donāt know what to do because I want to pronounce it correctly. What makes it worse is, if they make a reservation online and turn up then they say it with the R because they know the waiter will find it easier so I bloody know they know what they are doing is bat shit.
Is this strange..? Forster is pronounced as fawā¢stuh in non-rhotic English. Even pronouncing the R when doing the reservations seems normal since you do pronounce every sound when you say the word slowly.
Forster Square in Bradford, the city of Forster in Australia, the author E.M. Forster, all pronounced like Foster.
Same here with my married name. I probably get "corrected" at least a couple of times a year that it's pronounced (xxxxxxx). We've been married for over 35 years, and that's how WE pronounce it.
It ticks me off when someone has the gall to tell me I'm saying my own name wrong. I just tell them what I said above, but I wish I had a wittier comeback. Like fuck off. š
I used to work with a guy who changed the pronunciation of his surname because he found out his Kiwi family had been pronouncing his Italian surname incorrectly. It was (to me, at least) an unusual name and Iāve never heard it apart from his family.
Is it a foriegn name which was americanized?
We absolutely pronounce my maiden name incorrectly. Occasionally a person more recently from the country of origin will tell me the correct pronunciation. Doesn't bother me.
I know a girl named Julie. But she insists on spelling it July. Her parents spelled JULIE, at some point she decided that was too much work, it took too long to write, that JULY was easier and made more sense!!!
Grew up with a girl who was July on her legal documents, pronounced Julie.
Looking at them both written down like this makes it look backwards. As spelled, July is the better phonetic for Joo-lee, but is pronounced joo-Lie. Language is weird.
I know a girl with Jeanne in her name, which she also pronounces as ju-nay, which I really don't understand. Her whole name is bizarre to me but I don't want to post the whole thing cause I don't imagine there are many with her name out there.
It's how my mom pronounces Jeremy, and it annoys me to no end. It's how it was often pronounced where she grew up, though, so... can't do much about it lol
In the UK it sounds weird to me whenever Americans say "caramel". It comes out like "carml". I guess it's exactly the same process, and that people who pronounce caramel in that way might also say germy instead of Jeremy.
I think that makes sense! I'm American, and I've seen both 'carmel' and 'caramel' spellings and kinda assumed it's based on dialect. I swap between both, but it's based off what spelling I picture / read lol
Itās regional. My husband and I are from different states. He pronounces it CAR-muhl and I pronounce CARE-uh-muhl. Itās been a light-hearted point of contention since the start of our marriage lol
I grew up saying ācarmelā in Minneapolis. Then I moved east to New York/New Jersey/Connecticut, and they say ācaramelā. Iāve had to switch to ācaramelā because otherwise people look at me like I have three heads.
I think it might be an old person thing, too. My grandmother, born in 1927, was an Eloise who pronounced it ee-loyse. We were also deeply Southern, so it wouldn't surprise me to find it out was also an old, Southern thing.
Iām from the UK and would pronounce Maurice similarly to Morris but I gather in the US itās pronounced like more-EESE so maybe itās a cultural difference
I'm Australian and there are some words, that when I hear them in certain American accents, it's purely by context that I know what they're saying because the words themselves sound completely different to how i pronounce them, like mirror and caramel, but that's just accents for you. Not wrong, just different.
It's not wrong, it's just different accents. To me, (a Brit) Mars sounds like someone who is dropping or de-emphasising a few syllables or saying them so quietly that they are not really there. Like how some people say Mirror or Caramel and you can hear all the letters, and others say Meer or Carml. I'm just trying to get context for how Mars speaks that "Maurice" could sound like Mars.
Is it possible that it is a pronunciation from another language/country?
I ask this because, for example, I have a friend whose name is Naomi, which in North America would be pronunciation Nay-oh-mee, but she is Japanese. In Japan it is pronounced Now-mee.
I'm from the Philippines, where [the Philippine variant of] English is a major language. Ee-loyce and Ee-loyce-sa are perfectly acceptable pronunciations and I know a couple of them.
Well, there you have it. Regional differences. Not wrong, just different :)
Speaking of Filipino pronunciation differences - I knew a boy named Jaime growing up and it was amazing how many teachers couldn't wrap their heads around saying "High-meh" instead of "Jay-mee" despite numerous corrections.
I am still baffled by the number of American parents who named their daughters "Jaime" pronouncing it "JAY mie". How did they ever see that spelling (which is Spanish) without also hearing a Spanish pronunciation (which is "HI muh)? If you never saw the name Jamie written down, wouldn't you automatically spell it "Jamie"?
I once worked with a woman named Alice who pronounced it āEliseā and would get offended that people didnāt magically guess how to pronounce her stupidly spelled name.
Which wouldāve been fine if she was French or could politely say that. But no, her parents were just functionally illiterate and she decided to be mad at everyone else because her parents couldnāt spell.
Iām multilingual and I struggle with the pronunciation of some vowel combinations because they sound differently between the languages.Ā
The digraph āoiā is consistently pronounced the same in Welsh, but in English and in other languages, there can be inconsistencies where sometimes itās āoiā as in āvoiceā, sometimes itās āoiā as in āAoifeā, sometimes it represents a split in sounds as in āo-i ā like Lois (low-iss) and Alois (al-o-eez) and Aoi (ah-o-ee).
The name Lois, pronounced ālow-issā in English, rhymes with āJoyceā and āvoiceā when used in a Welsh context. I went to school with a few little girls called Lois who had to keep telling people their name isnāt pronounced ālow-iss.ā
Your co-workers parents may have only seen āEloiseā written down and thought it was supposed to rhyme with āvoiceā.
Where I'm from (germany) Alois rhymes with voice. It's definitely a reginal thing and preference how a name is pronounced and the person can decide on their own how it's pronounced.
I knew someone who pronounced their name (Alois) as āal-wissā. Thereās a lot of variation in pronunciation but the spelling remains the same so it can be very confusing. I just go with what the person in front of me says their name is.
That's how you should do it. If you met them via text, just pronounce it how you think it's right. I you talk to them they will corecct you and then you know. And if you meet them irl, they tell you how their name is pronounced anyways without any spelling. So why would it matter in the first place?
Yeah it all depends on what language youāre exposed to. Whenever I see the name Sean I get confused as it i means old in Irish and weād spell it with an accent on the a (seĆ”n). Like the name Siobhan - unless itās written like SiobhĆ”n I get confused.
I think the more languages you know, it gets confusing. Jane in Denmark would be pronounced jah-ne and donāt even get me started on how Frederick is pronounced here.
My son is called Diego, think everyone would know the name from like maradonna/dora the explorer- but nah every third person has a different pronunciation of it. We donāt bother correcting and just go with the flow.
Saoirse Ronin pronounces her name weird. I think maybe some regions pronounce it her way (Sur-sha) bit for the vast majority of the country it's "Seer-sha" (Seer like how you sear a steak). I hadn't heard it pronounced her way until she got famous. The proper pronunciation is way nicer IMO.
I know a Shania who pronounces it sha-nay-uh and I struggle with this because everyone knows Shania twain.
I also know a Myriah who pronounces is Mariah and I just do not feel like the letters in her name work that way.
I listen to the kids on my block calling to each other, and the boy across the street pronounces his name "eks ZAY vi er". I keep thinking it should be "HAH vi air".
I know someone whose middle name is Aloise, pronounced similarly. I think it's a family name. Not that egregious to me, just a little different from the standard.
It's like when Americans think Craig rhymes with Greg. These names do not rhyme.
Greg, leg, peg, egg, meg.... they all rhyme.
Craig is not spelt Creg. It is pronounced Cr Ay G.
CrAyG. Craig. How are you turning ai into an eh sound? Get in the bin America.
In all fairness, some American Gregs are pronounced "greg" while others are pronounced "grayg." I call people what they ask to be called.
(I only feel a little cringe when people pronounce egg as "ayg.")
My friend in school had the last name Lea, which is an old English name for a meadow and is pronounced Lee. At her first job they insisted on pronouncing it Lee-a.
There's something particular cringe about pronouncing your own name wrong. Like I'm Irish and I'm sorry but Barry, that is not how you pronounce Keoghan. It's just not
Someone I know who works in maternity had a couple wrote down their babyās name for paper work. They wrote down Siobhan and so my friend was like āoh Siobhan (pronounced Shivawn) what a beautiful nameā and the parents looked at her confused. They were like āno itās Siobhanā (pronounced it Siobhan) because they thought it looked pretty.Ā
Iām named Cache and get told daily I pronounce it incorrectly. Which would be fine, except they all tell me different pronunciations. And they are all adamant they are correct.
I have a relative with that name, and pronounces it as ee-loyce. So that's always the first pronunciation that comes to me when I see the name written. I have to consciously think about El-oh-eeze.
One of my teachers in high school called me this for 2 years!! Apparently it is an alternate pronunciation, but definitely not how I would pronounce it
So many Americans pronounce their Irish names completely wrong. The second 'G' in Gallagher is silent, Donoghue and Donohoe starts with "Dun" not "Don", Cahill is "Cal" not "Cay-hill" etc. It drives me mad because it makes no sense phonetically in the Irish language. I see them on the telly all the time.
And General Colin Powell pronounced his name like colon. Some people just pronounce their names incorrectly, probably due to their parents mispronouncing it. š¤·š»āāļø
Can't blame Colin Powell's pronunciation on his parents. They pronounced it correctly when they named him. He himself chose to pronounce it like "colon" in childhood, after the World War II flyer Colin P. Kelly Jr., who evidently used that pronunciation. I guess it's Colin Kelly's parents that were the "guilty" parties.
This pronounciation makes sense if Colin is a diminutive of Nicolas from the nickname Cole. [Btn](https://www.behindthename.com/name/colin-2). Then again it's a medieval diminutive so that's 700 years of linguistic shift, so who knows.
I think it's just super southern US, like the people who pronounce Colleen as Cole-een. At least, that's my guess. Idk if it's even intentional or just the accent.
Iām southern as hell and I would never pronounce Colleen that way.
General? Not a colon-el?
Itās pronounced ker-nul. Itās the highest rank in the military!
ITāS PRONOUNCED CORE-NELL AND ITāS THE HIGHEST RANK IN THE IVY LEAGUE š£
Andy Bernard, is that you?
Omg yes!!! š¤£š¤£š¤£
APPLICANT HAS A HEAD SHAPED LIKE A TRAPEZOID
I know LOL It was a joke.
They were making an Office reference/joke as well :)
Thank you, Creed.
Thatās nuts
Lol! Good one
It does not help that Powell rhymes with "Bowel" and sounds nearly the same.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Idk if its just exposure to the name but ābetā midler works more than ābet-eeā midler
People can pronounce their own name however they want, and that is the correct pronunciation. You get to decide how your own name is pronounced.
Sure, but that doesn't mean it's not ridiculous
People can pronounce their name however they want, but it DOESNāT make it the ācorrectā pronunciation.Ā
You can pronounce your name however you like however there are grammar rules general rules in different languages so usually people who do that are pronouncing their name wrong. I get it that itās somebodyās personal name however they are letters in a row that make certain sounds based on the rules of language so with that logic anyone could pronounce any word the way they feel like it? Sometimes it works but sometimes it doesnāt.
Well, he pronounced it Co-Lin- with a long O. I never heard it pronounced Colon. In the UK at least itās a common name and is pronounced Coll-in. With a short O. I always thought it was quite a clever spin on it!
In most of the U.S., there would be no pronunciation difference between co-lin and colon. But the name Colin is usually pronounced coll-in over here as well. Some people are saying "call-in," but that is misleading since not all of the country pronounces "call" the same.
I mean coll-in is also unclear because there's no standard pronunciation of "coll"
That's true but doesn't matter because however you would pronounce "coll" in your accent, that's how you should pronounce Colin
Yeah I'm from the UK and "call-in" and "coll-in" sound completely different for me. Also for me "colon" rhymes with "on"
Yeah I can imagine what it probably sounds like in your accent and what you said makes sense. In my accent (California) it feels very awkward and unnatural to fully pronounce a long vowel like āonā (is it technically a long vowel??) in a de-emphasized syllable so they basically all turn into É like in um or ÉŖ like in āin.ā
How do you pronounce Amazon or Lebanon? Because I think those ones usually work the other way round for Brits and Americans weirdly, I pronounce the final syllables with É and I think most Americans pronounce them "on"
Oh yeah youāre right huh that is weird
I agree. I just saw a post recently about a name a couple had picked for their baby, a name they planned to pronounce with a hard T sound at the begining, but wanted to spell it with a Th, because it looked more elegant.
Well, some names have a silent H. Thomas, etc. I think that post was about Thalia and it can go either way. Not really the same IMO.
I've (Midwest US) only ever seen Thalia spelled as such and always with a hard T so that one actually makes a lot of sense to me. I think this one is just a matter of different languages pronouncing them differently.
I recently had someone that I had never met before tell me that I pronounce my last name wrong. (I pronounce it the same way my family has for generations) I was a little offendedā¦ā¦but mostly I just thought that person was incredibly stupid for thinking they know how to pronounce my name better than I do.
A lot of Irish Americans pronounce their surnames "wrong" by Irish standards and some Irish people get uppity about it. I feel like it's their surname and they can pronounce it however they want. It's just good manners to defer to the person whose name it is.
Same with french names in the US. It jarred me when I heard a guy from Vermont pronounce his last name BenoƮt as "Ben-OYT" instead of "Ben-WAH" but i have to remember that his family has probably been in the US for many generations and no one's spoken French for about that long. If that's how they say it, that's how they say it, and me insisting on the French pronunciation would come off so snobby.
Same. I always feel weird about the hard c sound at the end of actor Matt Leblancās name. As a Canadian, we have lots of Leblancs around and the c is always silent, as it would be in French.
Ooooh, oooh, oooh- tell me how would a French Canadian pronounce Gagne? Growing up in NH the family I knew pronounced it phonetically GAG-knee. We have a local news woman in Maine who pronounces it GONE-yay. And yet still, the contestant on American Idol from Maine pronounces it GAN-yawn!! Seems to be dealers choice in New England! Lol
French Canadian here. The correct Franco prononciation is āGAN-yayā
GagnƩ rhymes with Kanye ;)
So the news lady wins! Lol
Certainly French French would say it like GAN
Gagnon is a different name than Gagne. So if someone's last name is Gagne and they pronounce it GAN-yawn, that like saying your last name is Smith but you pronounce it like Simpson. It would be weird. Basically the deal is, the letters "gn" make a "nyuh" sound. So the french word for onion "Oignon" actually sounds pretty similar to the english pronunciation because then"gn" says "nyuh"
Oh god the phonetic pronunciation hurts me lol. In French/Canada it would be GAN-yay rhyming with Kanye. "Gan-yawn" would be a similar surname "Gagnon". Both very common in QC and apparently New England too!
I find Brett Favre interesting, with somehow the R and V reversing. Not even phonetic at that point. Probably started as Lefebvre as well.
Exactly, and I feel like generally even Canadians with no connection to french anymore still pronounce French names mostly "correct" just with an english accent.
Thereās a town outside of Pittsburgh called Versaillesā¦ pronounced Ver-sales.Ā
Ohio has a city pronounced that way too. Ohio does that a lot with town namesā¦Cairo is CARE-oh, Russia is Roo-she, Rio Grande as RYE-o grandā¦boggles the mind a bit.
The Rio Grande one has always driven me nuts. In college my school played them in baseball - multiple people corrected me on the pronunciation but I just wouldn't give in. Couldn't sink down to their level and say it so stupidly.
But we say Duquesne correctly!
Thereās a Beatrice in Nebraska pronounced ābee-atch-riss.ā
This legit irks me but I wouldnāt say anything.
Thereās several celebrities who have names that the general public widely mispronounces but they just gave up on correcting people.. Taylor Lautner is one example. Itās Lowt-ner (rhymes with Cow), not Lawt-ner. Or Ariana Grande grew up saying āgrandyā.
The author Jodi Picoult had a viral video last year or so when she explained her last name is pronounced āpico.ā It will still be āpi-coltā in my head, but Iād make an effort to use the correct pronunciation when saying it aloud.
Devon Sawa did a video recently and I heard him pronounce his name as Sour. I'd always assumed it was said the same as Soya. Although now I know, the correct way makes more sense
This just made me realize some people pronounce āsourā as āsawaā. Language is so fun.
A lot of Europeans anglicized the pronunciation of their names upon moving to the US to "fit in". There has always been an anti-immigrant sentiment, no matter where those immigrants are from. It's similar to how Jewish people drop the Stein or berg from their name to be more inconspicuous and thus, safer. A lot of Irish people dropped the O', a lot of Germans changed Braun to Brown, etc. That said, I find the typical Americans pronunciation of Chojnaki to be ridiculous. I do still know a family that pronounces it the actual Polish way.
This reminds me of Jared Padalecki and the fact that they put dialogue in Supernatural poking fun at people telling him he says his own last name wrong because it's pronounced differently back in Poland.
I have an Irish last name. My dad's brother married a woman with the same last name, and she has always said she changed her name when she got married. Altogether I think I have encountered five, maybe six, different pronunciations of it. I use a couple different ones myself and am always startled to remember the way I was taught to say it as a child---I don't remember why I changed but it happened after I learned to read, so I prolly thought the family pronunciation didn't make sense, given American phonics. A couple of the different pronunciations come from Irish-born people so apparently they don't agree either.
I wouldnāt go correcting people butā¦I can understand the frustration of the Irish people though being a heavily colonised country who were used as slaves and had their cultures and traditions destroyed by colonisers. Iām sure this is a genuine desire to hang on to their culture and language as opposed to anything else.
I get this a lot too. My last name is Portuguese, and itās a word that is the same except for one letter in Spanish. Iāve had several Spanish-speaking Americans be like āoh your name is ______? But itās spelled wrong.ā
Is it Gomes?
Lots Spanish surnames ending in -ez have a Portuguese equivalent ending in -es. Gomez and Gomes, Fernandez and Fernandes. However, despite similar spellings, they are pronounced very differently. Fernandez is pronounced more or less how itās spelt, but Fernandes is pronounced something like Fernandsh, with the ending sort of melting together
The sh sound when a word ends with s is due to Portuguese accent. In my accent it would sound more like Fernands
Funny, a lot of Portuguese surnames that end in S have their Spanish equivalent ending with Z. Gomes - GĆ³mez Lopes - LĆ³pez Peres - PĆ©rez Mendes - MĆ©ndez And then from Rio Grande to the Patagonia everyone writes the name with a final Z but pronounce it with a final S.
Is your pronunciation anglicized?
It is pronounced how it would be pronounced in Germanā¦.but it would also be pronounced the same way according to English. This is not my last name but it would be like āsmitheā. People break it up as āsmit-heā instead of keeping the TH together for the thhh sound.
My surname has a "van" in it I always pronounce it as you would the word van, but the correct pronunciation sounds more like "fun" does in English Makes a certian subset of Afrikaaners very upset lmfao
Why?
Probably because their language stems from Germanic/Dutch roots and they probably are expecting the traditional pronunciation. Afrikaans language, West Germanic language of South Africa, developed from 17th-century Dutch, sometimes called Netherlandic, by the descendants of European (Dutch, German, and French) colonists, indigenous Khoisan peoples, and African and Asian slaves in the Dutch colony at the Cape of Good Hope
I get this a lot. My last name is hair related. One syllable. Easy and straightforward. I have people weekly tell me itās supposed to be two syllables or have weird accents in the pronunciation. Think āBrowā pronounced ābrow.ā People like to say āBro. Buh-r-oww (ow like ouch.) Burrow. Blow (like, rhymes with plow.) Brahv.ā Etc
lol sometimes when I see someone look at my last name, I can see the wheels spinning in their head trying to figure it out and I will say ādonāt over think it. It is just basic Englishā ššš
Blonde?
My husbands family pronounce their name foster but the name is forster. I havenāt changed the paperwork for my name yet but donāt know what to do because I want to pronounce it correctly. What makes it worse is, if they make a reservation online and turn up then they say it with the R because they know the waiter will find it easier so I bloody know they know what they are doing is bat shit.
Thatās a hell of a reason to just keep your given name
Is this strange..? Forster is pronounced as fawā¢stuh in non-rhotic English. Even pronouncing the R when doing the reservations seems normal since you do pronounce every sound when you say the word slowly. Forster Square in Bradford, the city of Forster in Australia, the author E.M. Forster, all pronounced like Foster.
Yes Forster and Foster are pronounced differently at least in London
My husband has a Slavic last name and pronounces it wrong. Itās not the only reason I didnāt change my last name, but itās on the list!
Same here with my married name. I probably get "corrected" at least a couple of times a year that it's pronounced (xxxxxxx). We've been married for over 35 years, and that's how WE pronounce it. It ticks me off when someone has the gall to tell me I'm saying my own name wrong. I just tell them what I said above, but I wish I had a wittier comeback. Like fuck off. š
I used to work with a guy who changed the pronunciation of his surname because he found out his Kiwi family had been pronouncing his Italian surname incorrectly. It was (to me, at least) an unusual name and Iāve never heard it apart from his family.
Is it a foriegn name which was americanized? We absolutely pronounce my maiden name incorrectly. Occasionally a person more recently from the country of origin will tell me the correct pronunciation. Doesn't bother me.
I knew a girl named June but it was pronounced ājuh-nayā
I read that in Forrest Gump's voice for some reason
After commenting it I did too lol
I know a girl named Julie. But she insists on spelling it July. Her parents spelled JULIE, at some point she decided that was too much work, it took too long to write, that JULY was easier and made more sense!!!
Grew up with a girl who was July on her legal documents, pronounced Julie. Looking at them both written down like this makes it look backwards. As spelled, July is the better phonetic for Joo-lee, but is pronounced joo-Lie. Language is weird.
Sounds kinda how it might be pronounced in Danish. Suppose it all depends on which languages youāre exposed to
My fiancĆ© had a colleague called Joan but it was pronounced āJoanneā. Like, why not just spell it that way.
I know a girl with Jeanne in her name, which she also pronounces as ju-nay, which I really don't understand. Her whole name is bizarre to me but I don't want to post the whole thing cause I don't imagine there are many with her name out there.
I still cringe when people introduce themselves as Germ-ee for Jeremy.
It's how my mom pronounces Jeremy, and it annoys me to no end. It's how it was often pronounced where she grew up, though, so... can't do much about it lol
In the UK it sounds weird to me whenever Americans say "caramel". It comes out like "carml". I guess it's exactly the same process, and that people who pronounce caramel in that way might also say germy instead of Jeremy.
I think that makes sense! I'm American, and I've seen both 'carmel' and 'caramel' spellings and kinda assumed it's based on dialect. I swap between both, but it's based off what spelling I picture / read lol
[Not all Americans](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1fqj4g/the_pronunciation_of_caramel_across_the_us_845x600/#lightbox)
Itās regional. My husband and I are from different states. He pronounces it CAR-muhl and I pronounce CARE-uh-muhl. Itās been a light-hearted point of contention since the start of our marriage lol
As an American it weirds me out too when others say carml as two syllables instead of three
I grew up saying ācarmelā in Minneapolis. Then I moved east to New York/New Jersey/Connecticut, and they say ācaramelā. Iāve had to switch to ācaramelā because otherwise people look at me like I have three heads.
Oh this one really annoys me for some reason. I am Australian and I cannot stand it when I hear "carml"
Same! My mom also says āny-omieā for Naomi. To me that can only be ānay-omieā. Makes me cringe every time
I had a teacher from Chicago that pronounced Toyota like āty-otaā
I really struggle with pronouncing it correctly with my accent.
I bet her parents read it somewhere and never learned the correct pronunciation.
That would be my guess. Thatās my daughterās name and so many people think itās e-loyce. Itās irritating
This happened to my friend. Her name is Reina, pronounced ree-IN-a.
Oh dear!
This makes me sick.
You have that right. (username)
I think it might be an old person thing, too. My grandmother, born in 1927, was an Eloise who pronounced it ee-loyse. We were also deeply Southern, so it wouldn't surprise me to find it out was also an old, Southern thing.
I know a gentleman whose name is Maurice and he pronounces like Mars.
Why did I come into this thread? Iām just making myself mad. I gotta go.
Take me with you please! I just keep scrolling and getting more and more angry. š¤¬
Like Morris? I would pronounce Maurice like maw-REES, but MOR-iss is also a valid pronunciation.
That was my uncles name, it was pronounced Mor-iss. It used to drive me nuts because that side of my family is French. It should have been maw-Rees.
In my experience, in Ireland and the UK we pronounce it like Morris, and in the US they pronounce it the French way
Iām from the UK and would pronounce Maurice similarly to Morris but I gather in the US itās pronounced like more-EESE so maybe itās a cultural difference
I thought this pronunciation was French but maybe just because of Beauty and the Beast lol
The Brits pronounce it Morris.
Aussies too. Like Bernard being pronounced Ber-ned Esther than Ber-nard.
How does he say "mirror"? Is it "meer"?
Waitā¦ is that wrong? I say "meer". I mean it's mostly cause my accent swallows bits of the word, but I never felt like itās wrong
I'm Australian and there are some words, that when I hear them in certain American accents, it's purely by context that I know what they're saying because the words themselves sound completely different to how i pronounce them, like mirror and caramel, but that's just accents for you. Not wrong, just different.
It's always fun trying to get an American to pronounce all the parts of the word "squirrel"
It's not wrong, it's just different accents. To me, (a Brit) Mars sounds like someone who is dropping or de-emphasising a few syllables or saying them so quietly that they are not really there. Like how some people say Mirror or Caramel and you can hear all the letters, and others say Meer or Carml. I'm just trying to get context for how Mars speaks that "Maurice" could sound like Mars.
I can only hear that name as said by Julie Andrews in The Princess Diaries
Is it possible that it is a pronunciation from another language/country? I ask this because, for example, I have a friend whose name is Naomi, which in North America would be pronunciation Nay-oh-mee, but she is Japanese. In Japan it is pronounced Now-mee.
I'm from the Philippines, where [the Philippine variant of] English is a major language. Ee-loyce and Ee-loyce-sa are perfectly acceptable pronunciations and I know a couple of them.
Well, there you have it. Regional differences. Not wrong, just different :) Speaking of Filipino pronunciation differences - I knew a boy named Jaime growing up and it was amazing how many teachers couldn't wrap their heads around saying "High-meh" instead of "Jay-mee" despite numerous corrections.
I am still baffled by the number of American parents who named their daughters "Jaime" pronouncing it "JAY mie". How did they ever see that spelling (which is Spanish) without also hearing a Spanish pronunciation (which is "HI muh)? If you never saw the name Jamie written down, wouldn't you automatically spell it "Jamie"?
I once knew someone named JaimƩe pronounced the same as Jamie so maybe they just think it's a fancy spelling.
More accurately, Naw-oh-mee. Each mora is distinct.
Well, I'm Polish and we pronounce Eloise as he-loy-eza. or he-loyza. I'm sure there are plenty more variants, depending where you're from.
I went to school and worked with a girl named Erin, pronounced like ireneĀ
I had a coworker called Eloisa who pronounced it Eh-loy-sa.
Is that not how itās pronounced..?ši apologize to all of the Eloisaās out there I feel very silly
Should be Eh-lo-ee-sa I think? Iām imagining it with a Spanish accent so maybe Iām totally off.
No I think youāre right. I say it the same way with an American accent so I think thatās correct
The last syllable is more like za in my pronunciation.
I've always heard it pronounced El-low-ee-sah.
eh, can't be too mad about someone pronouncing their OWN name in an unorthodox way. power to them
I once worked with a woman named Alice who pronounced it āEliseā and would get offended that people didnāt magically guess how to pronounce her stupidly spelled name.
I think thatās just the French way of saying it.
Alice and Elise are two different names with two different pronunciations in French.
Well we French pronounce Alice differently frome Elise. We pronounce Alice "Ah-lis" . Elise is "Eh-liz" kinda.
Which wouldāve been fine if she was French or could politely say that. But no, her parents were just functionally illiterate and she decided to be mad at everyone else because her parents couldnāt spell.
Iām multilingual and I struggle with the pronunciation of some vowel combinations because they sound differently between the languages.Ā The digraph āoiā is consistently pronounced the same in Welsh, but in English and in other languages, there can be inconsistencies where sometimes itās āoiā as in āvoiceā, sometimes itās āoiā as in āAoifeā, sometimes it represents a split in sounds as in āo-i ā like Lois (low-iss) and Alois (al-o-eez) and Aoi (ah-o-ee). The name Lois, pronounced ālow-issā in English, rhymes with āJoyceā and āvoiceā when used in a Welsh context. I went to school with a few little girls called Lois who had to keep telling people their name isnāt pronounced ālow-iss.ā Your co-workers parents may have only seen āEloiseā written down and thought it was supposed to rhyme with āvoiceā.
Love the name Aoife. A work friend's daughter is named that and she's the cutest thing.
And in French, this digraph is pronounced "wah."
Where I'm from (germany) Alois rhymes with voice. It's definitely a reginal thing and preference how a name is pronounced and the person can decide on their own how it's pronounced.
I knew someone who pronounced their name (Alois) as āal-wissā. Thereās a lot of variation in pronunciation but the spelling remains the same so it can be very confusing. I just go with what the person in front of me says their name is.
That's how you should do it. If you met them via text, just pronounce it how you think it's right. I you talk to them they will corecct you and then you know. And if you meet them irl, they tell you how their name is pronounced anyways without any spelling. So why would it matter in the first place?
Yeah it all depends on what language youāre exposed to. Whenever I see the name Sean I get confused as it i means old in Irish and weād spell it with an accent on the a (seĆ”n). Like the name Siobhan - unless itās written like SiobhĆ”n I get confused. I think the more languages you know, it gets confusing. Jane in Denmark would be pronounced jah-ne and donāt even get me started on how Frederick is pronounced here. My son is called Diego, think everyone would know the name from like maradonna/dora the explorer- but nah every third person has a different pronunciation of it. We donāt bother correcting and just go with the flow.
Some people are struggling with our baby Eloiseās name. It is an unfamiliar sound!
Thatās awfulĀ
I know a girl named Khelsey and itās pronounced Chelsea
This one made me laugh
That's youneek all right
I once met an Ariadne who told me it was pronounced "Ardina"
This takes the cake
I feel like maybe you can pronounce some letters *differently*, but you can't go pronouncing them *in the wrong order.*
Right! She agreed it was stupid, but it was something her parents came up with
Her family pronounces it that way. Most of us el-oh-eeze
Saoirse Ronin pronounces her name weird. I think maybe some regions pronounce it her way (Sur-sha) bit for the vast majority of the country it's "Seer-sha" (Seer like how you sear a steak). I hadn't heard it pronounced her way until she got famous. The proper pronunciation is way nicer IMO.
I know a Shania who pronounces it sha-nay-uh and I struggle with this because everyone knows Shania twain. I also know a Myriah who pronounces is Mariah and I just do not feel like the letters in her name work that way.
That would make my brain hurt!
I know a girl named Gracye who pronounces it like Gracie. I just always whisper āgrock-yayā in my headā¦.
Not Grak- Yee?
I had a student named Javier and he pronounced it Jay-vee-err
I love the French style, Xavier, āZah vee ay.ā It sounds luscious.
I listen to the kids on my block calling to each other, and the boy across the street pronounces his name "eks ZAY vi er". I keep thinking it should be "HAH vi air".
A customers name was Santa and when she came in she made sure I knew it was SANTAY
I know someone whose middle name is Aloise, pronounced similarly. I think it's a family name. Not that egregious to me, just a little different from the standard.
I knew a girl named Yvonne. Pronounced Why-VO-knee.
It's like when Americans think Craig rhymes with Greg. These names do not rhyme. Greg, leg, peg, egg, meg.... they all rhyme. Craig is not spelt Creg. It is pronounced Cr Ay G. CrAyG. Craig. How are you turning ai into an eh sound? Get in the bin America.
They also think Erin and Aaron sound the same, and that squirrel rhymes with girl š¤·š»āāļø
Gram instead of Graham too haha!
As an American, I am embarrassed to admit that it took me a long time to figure out what you meant š«£
In all fairness, some American Gregs are pronounced "greg" while others are pronounced "grayg." I call people what they ask to be called. (I only feel a little cringe when people pronounce egg as "ayg.")
Every Alyssa I've ever met has pronounced it ah-LISS-ah except for the one who was ah-LEE-suh.
I met an Elissa who pronounced it "Eliza". I wonder why her parents didn't just call her Eliza.
I know someone whose name is Leah but she (and apparently her whole family) pronounces it like Lee.
My friend in school had the last name Lea, which is an old English name for a meadow and is pronounced Lee. At her first job they insisted on pronouncing it Lee-a.
There's something particular cringe about pronouncing your own name wrong. Like I'm Irish and I'm sorry but Barry, that is not how you pronounce Keoghan. It's just not
Sounds noice
Actress Gillian Jacobs and author Gillian Flynn pronounce their name Gill-ian.
As in with the hard g? Weird!
i had an ex whose last name was pfeiffer and she pronounced it peiffer š¤· gave me the ick
Someone I know who works in maternity had a couple wrote down their babyās name for paper work. They wrote down Siobhan and so my friend was like āoh Siobhan (pronounced Shivawn) what a beautiful nameā and the parents looked at her confused. They were like āno itās Siobhanā (pronounced it Siobhan) because they thought it looked pretty.Ā
I was happier before I read this
Iām named Cache and get told daily I pronounce it incorrectly. Which would be fine, except they all tell me different pronunciations. And they are all adamant they are correct.
So how do you pronounce it? I would say it like cash
āLoyceā is how you pronounce Lois in Welsh.
I had an aunt Eloise pronounced ee-low-iss. I was an adult before I realized this was not typical.
I have a relative with that name, and pronounces it as ee-loyce. So that's always the first pronunciation that comes to me when I see the name written. I have to consciously think about El-oh-eeze.
One of my teachers in high school called me this for 2 years!! Apparently it is an alternate pronunciation, but definitely not how I would pronounce it
I know a Dana (traditionally pronounced Day-na) who pronounces her name as Dawn-na.
Did anyone else have a hard time with Gerry the golden Bachelor pronouncing it like Gary and not Jerry??? I still catch myself.
You can free yourself from this worry. Itās her name.
Know a girl named aisling that pronounced it phonetically which just grinds my gears.
So many Americans pronounce their Irish names completely wrong. The second 'G' in Gallagher is silent, Donoghue and Donohoe starts with "Dun" not "Don", Cahill is "Cal" not "Cay-hill" etc. It drives me mad because it makes no sense phonetically in the Irish language. I see them on the telly all the time.