(no subject)

[red-inuzuka.livejournal.com]

What do you guys think of names with accents, such as Tomàs ('Toe-mas') or Simón ('See-mon' not 'sigh-men')? The reason I ask is I've never seen accents on formal paperwork, but maybe that's because I'm in the USA. So, it seems almost unfair to give a child a name with an accent if it will always be "misspelled" but I guess it depends on how much it upsets the parents in the beginning and the child later on.

Or maybe I'm wrong? Do schools, and other paperwork include accents?

Comments

[quite-rosie.livejournal.com]

I think it depends on the school. At the school I student taught at, I had a boy with the last name "Muñoz" on some paper work, he had the proper ñ and on some there wasn't. We are in the USA.

[luxury-bus.livejournal.com]

I'm 100% German, and my maiden name had umlauts. Although I was born in Germany, I grew up in the US, and schools/work/etc. almost never put umlauts for my last name. My parents didn't nessecarily care, because they "knew Americans were lazy," and wouldn't take the extra time to type out the commands on the keyboard to get an umlaut.

Also, when I was in elementary school, I always signed my name with umlauts, but throughout middle school, high school, and college, I ended up just doing the "lazy umlauts" (a dash above the vowel) or leaving them out completely. It was just something that didn't bother me too terribly.

[xpaniic.livejournal.com]

I used to be friends with a boy names Tomas and he put the accents above it, I don't know if the school did on his paper work or not. My friends little sister also has one in her name and I had no idea it was there until one day she was telling me about it.

If it was my name, I'd probably be mad if people didn't put it on there, to me it'd be like misspelling the name.
(Even though I don't put them on, because I don't know how on the computer! :P)

[aballard23.livejournal.com]

The alt+number system is how you put them on, lol. Each letter with an accent has it's own alt code. Like to get • it's alt+0149.

[aquilinum.livejournal.com]

I always write and type accents or umlauts if they help me pronounce the name.

The umlaut in "Chloë" tells me that the E is not silent; the umlaut in "Björk" tells me that the word doesn't rhyme with York but instead sounds like a German "ö" -- almost rhyming with Turk.

The accent in Tomás means that it is pronounced toh-MAHS and not with the stress on the first syllable.

They're not just random marks.

I don't usually mind when other Americans or Brits leave off punctuation, as long as they're still pronouncing the name correctly, especially when typing (I know this loaned keyboard won't obey the command, and I have to use the character map). But if you don't trust yourself to say it right without the mark there to remind you, leave it!

[tryyingtoevolve.livejournal.com]

My friend's last name has an 'o' with a ^ and an 'e' with an accent, and she leaves them off all the time. The only problem is, people then pronounce her name differently. There are some names that I think don't necessarily need the accents because people still say them correctly -- Renee, Chloe, etc. -- but there are others where they are needed, like in Simón, since it's pronounced differently without it.

Name Punctuation: Consider it Skipped

[crossingthesea.livejournal.com]

I don't particularly think not adding in name punctuation is lazy. Realistically speaking, it's not going to happen in the US. My suggestion is to spell your names according to how you want them pronounced without the punctuation.

Tomas is going to get pronounced correctly because of the spelling. For Simon with the accent, you're better off spelling it Simone if that's the way you want it pronounced. Both are really good names.

[ladymela99.livejournal.com]

I spent five years teaching head start and I know that one of the big movements is to make sure that everyone spells names exactly like how they were meant to be spelled. So it was always important for us to include accent marks. I don't know if this movement is carrying over to the public schools.

[0o-faerie.livejournal.com]

Both accents and hyphens are fine by me. I guess it really depends on where you're from and what you're used to: I'm not sure, but I believe here (Europe) accents are much more common than in the USA.

Interestingly enough (to get back to your examples), we pronounce Thomas like TOE-mahs and Simon like SEE-mon, whereas we would pronounce Tomàs like Toe-MAHS and Simón like See-MON.
So basically, what I'm trying to say is that with the accents, the emphasis on syllables changes, rather than the pronunciation.

[seksimaggie.livejournal.com]

I knew a girl in school whose last name was Meuché, and the school always put Meuche' (with an apostrophe after the name) like it was the same thing, and it always annoyed her.

[waitingonsunday.livejournal.com]

I do a lot of customer paperwork at my job and if there is an accent in the name, I always take the time to do the alt-codes to make the special characters, personally. I have most of them memorized, but if I don't know, I'll look it up on the character map. I think I'm the only one here who does any of this, but I work with a lot of people who aren't very computer-literate and probably don't even know that there's a way to do these sorts of things. Sometimes I have to show them how to copy and paste or print email, so. Yeah.

I do have certain programs that won't allow for any special characters, though, so in those cases, no can do.

[nearlyalegume.livejournal.com]

It's odd, because some of the names that my partner and I like for our future children are correctly spelled with accents (Gráinne and Ciáran), and yet when I did a poll here, I was basically told to leave them off because they were pointless. I'm not going to leave them off, especially not for Gráinne. It might well be the different between her name being pronounced 'Grain-nee' (wrong) and 'Graw-nya' (right).

I work with a guy whose eldest daughter is named Anäis, which I think is lovely. She is about six, but she knows to spell her name with umlauts. Do it properly or don't do it at all, I reckon.