more of a discussion than having to do with any actual names.

[laminy.livejournal.com]

Parents often change the spelling of a name to something that they like and think looks better. Do you think that parents can change the way a name is actually said to something that they think sounds better? They either know the actual pronunciation and don't care, or they saw the name without a pronunciation and came up with their own.

If you look at a name like Siobhan and say it with the B instead of a V, and you like that sound better, do you care that that's not how it's actually pronounced (if you ever do bother to find out)? Even something as common as Kaden - if you say cad-in instead of kay-den, could be mispronounced. Do you think that people should look up the correct pronunciation when they pick a name and use only that pronunciation?

A couple of years ago, a name that I really liked was Samaire (it's not a top favourite anymore). I had no idea how to pronounce it, so I started saying suh-mare. Recently, I found out that the name is actually pronounced like suh-meer-uh, but I still say it the way that I did originally.

As well, I think that the name Isolde is very pretty. And I was very convinced that it was pronounced is-old, like 'that girl is old' :) That's the way that I think it's the prettiest. I heard it being pronounced eye-zol-dee though, and I don't like that at all; as well, I don't actually know what the correct pronunciation actually is. I know that if I ever used the name Isolde (and it's not very likely that I would, it's not very high on my list of girl names), I would use my original pronunciation, right or wrong.


If you did use an 'incorrect' pronunciation on your child, and sometime after they were born somebody corrected you, would you change what you called your kid? EDIT: the reason I asked this question is because I read that with the actress Samaire Armstrong (Anna from The OC), her parents called her 'sam-air' for the first months before a person who knew the Gaelic language corrected her, and they corrected their pronunciation.

Comments

[lustdumpster.livejournal.com]

i wouldn't give my child a name i was mispronouncing, no. that's the same to me as mispronouncing a word. bad example but if someone prefers to pronounce bear as be-are i will think they are stupid, regardless. if someone names their child siobhan and insists on pronouncing the b, i would think they are ridiculous and they should have chosen a name that they liked the original, correct pronunciation of.

and as for the last question, that's really difficult to answer. i'd feel retarded for mispronouncing my own childs name but i'm not sure i would change it.

[ladymela99.livejournal.com]

I see where you are coming from and I don't know how I feel about it. I guess if it's an unusual name you can get by with telling people that it's pronounced a certain way and not many people are going to correct you. How would they know?

Personally I though Isolde was pronounced Is-o-dol...I'm not really sure why I thought that.

I felt the same way about the name Acacia. I pronouced it A-Case-ee-uh..

I found out it's really A-Casshe-uh. I liked my way better with the Casey in the middle so I sort of put the name on the back burner but I still think I could get away with telling people how to pronounce the name.

Be warned though people will likely pronouce it wrong! So you are going to have to deal with constantly correcting them forever. However, this can also happen when giving them normal names. LOL

[perfectcherry.livejournal.com]

It's actually pronounced more like "i-zold-uh," rather than with long i and long e sounds. If you don't like it anymore, you could use the older form, Isolt, which is from the Old French and may have been closer to the pronunciation Sir Thomas Mallory used himself, but since it was written in Middle French, I can't say for sure - I'm no expert on etymology.

I would be very careful to find out the various pronunciations of any name before giving it to my child, so I wouldn't end up in that situation. However, any of the names I'm likely to choose are those that I already know how to pronounce properly. If I did wind up choosing a name without really knowing the pronunciation or being able to manage it (like the Western habit of adding emphasis to syllable groups of Japanese names), I would just continue to use the mispronunciation.

[laminy.livejournal.com]

I do have a question though (if you don't mind): when it comes to incorrect spellings of a name, how can somebody tell if it's a incorrect spelling and not just a different spelling? Lots of names have more than one way to spell it. Somebody could say that Aimee looks stupid and wrong and that it should be Amy.

How different from the original name would it have to be before it was incorrect?

[lilacmermaid.livejournal.com]

Most of the names that I expect to use are common enough that this wouldn't be a problem for me. If I did start liking a new name that I wasn't sure about, I would spend a lot of time looking into the name and so I would figure out before choosing it (or not) how to pronounce it properly.

The only example I can kind of give as comparison was when I first read the Harry Potter books, I didn't know how to pronounce Hermione properly. When I learned the correct pronunciation I started pronouncing it that way right away.

[0o-faerie.livejournal.com]

It depends.

Generally, I'd say no, don't give your child a mispronounced name. That just seems kind of weird. I would definitely check out the pronunciation of a name before giving it to my child!

I think for me, the only exception would be very ethnical names. Say, I wanted to name my child something very Greek, say Euridice. In Dutch (I'm Dutch) this would sound different from what it would sound like in Greek. In English, it would sound even more different from the way it would sound in Greek.
So, if I were to name my kid Euridice, I'd use the Dutch pronunciation to avoid confusion and misspelling.

Still, I think it's different with Gaelic names. I think because if it's an obviously Gaelic name, like Siobhan, people should know better and check out the pronunciation because they know Gaelic names are pronounced so differently from the way they're spelled.
I never knew Samaire was pronounced liked that either, though, so thanks for enlighting me ;)! It doesn't look Gaelic, at first glance, only when you start thinking about it.

[tunknut.livejournal.com]

I actually do think Aimee looks stupid and wrong when it's pronounced the same as Amy. I've known people who pronounce it both ways, but I think Aimee's supposed to be pronounced eh-MAY like the French word rather than AY-mee. I actually like the sound of both pronunciations, but if I wanted it to be pronounced the latter way I'd just use Amy and eliminate the confusion.

[tunknut.livejournal.com]

IAWTC. Also, I guess the best solution here is if you really like the way eyes-old sounds you could invent a name just because it sounds pretty, it's a common enough strategy nowadays. Eizold and Isolde pronounced Eizold both repulse me, but the former less so.

[mrandmrschippy.livejournal.com]

Standard names are no different to words. It sounds uneducated if someone mispronounces a word. Same thing with Siobhan if they say SY-oh-barn instead of SHIH-vawn.

So yes, anytime I get corrected on my pronounciation, I change it.

And yes, I think people should check pronounciation when they pick a name and use the correct pronounciation. Or use their own 'creative' spelling if they just want a sound, not a real name.

[mrandmrschippy.livejournal.com]

Spell check...pronunciation!

[krosp.livejournal.com]

It probably depends on the name and now many variants of the name exist already. Like I knew an Alicia who pronounced it a-LISS-ee-uh, when most people here pronounce it a-LEESH-a. But because there's so many names that sound like that - Alyssa, Elise, etc... (I know they're not related though)... it seems more normal than just deciding that say, Stephanie is going to be stef-uh-NY (instead of nee).

I recently heard of a girl called Chloe pronounced as it looks. So not klo-ee, but chlo-ee.... you know, with the "ch" sound like at the start of "children" !!! The person telling me about it said that people always tell this girl "no, it's klo-ee" and the girl said "No it's not! My mother saw my name written down and thought it was chlo-ee and so that's what she called me, so it IS chlo-ee!"

So there's an example of someone who didn't change it after they found out. Man, I would certainly change it if I were her, even if my mother hadn't!

[freely-dream.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I'm not sure really. I would suppose I would stick to my guns and tell others thanks but no thanks. My name is actually spelled Ashly and since I've been in school my teachers have tried to correct my spelling. I even had a History professor count points off of my paper because he thought I spelled my name wrong on purpose. Infact unless someone wants topronounce it the right way, or spell it the right way you shouldn't push the matter. Yes, I think some names are silly or stupid spelled or pronounced different ways. And I usually like to pronouce everything the way it should be but I have no problem with the way others do things.

[aqualectra.livejournal.com]

I was very careful when i chose a Gaelic name for my daughter. we checked and re-checked the pronunciation Ceilidh (kay-lee). i have heard of someone naming their daughter Ceilidh can pronuncing it seel-dah. which makes me think they really should have had some knowledge of the word before choosing to use it. But then people fight over how to pronounce Sarah. so. people will do what they do.

[daydream11.livejournal.com]

I admit that I go to dictionary.com to find out the correct pronunciation. It matters to me, because my name is often mispronounced. I was/am upset when I found out Iolanthe is pronounced with the 'yo' sound at the beginning, because I love the way it looks written down and how I said it first (EE-oh-LAN-thee). Now I hate the name!

Extreme example, but I think you get my point.

Now, if there were honest-to-goodness legit different pronunciations of a name, then I'd pick the one I like and go from there.

[twitchywoman.livejournal.com]

When I first heard my favorite name Aurelia, it was very quickly and in an English movie (Love Actually), so I wasn't sure how it would be pronounced with an American accent. I looked it up so many times trying to find the "right" pronunciation, because I really did not want to have it be wrong and then have someone think I am an idiot for pronouncing it wrong. So yeah, I wouldn't make up a pronunciation for a name I actually intended on using. There are names though that I like different pronunciations of though like Cedric (see-drick), Marisa (ma-ree-suh), Malachy (mal-uh-kee, although this is legit and might be the original pronunciation), Louisa (lu-eece-uh, which is the Spanish pronunciation).

[duckduckcaboose.livejournal.com]

Well... As a Melissa, May-liss-AAHH is actually pretty close to the Hispanic pronunciation of my name, lol. It's more May-LEE-sah though.

I still agree with you, but I'm just saying.

[duckduckcaboose.livejournal.com]

Yeah. See, my whole thing is I'm going to pronounce everything the proper way. I introduce myself as "Mel-ISS-ah," because that is how my name is spelled, and because I have a pretty neutral accent. However, I know that since I live in Georgia, many people are going to say "Muh-liz-uh" just because of their accents, and when I visit my cousins in London, their friends are going to call me "MAH-LISS-er" (the er is very, very subtle, but it's there and it drives me nuts but it's just the way they speak).

And if people pronounce their own names incorrectly (the only one I can think of is a Lauren that insisted her name was "lo-REN" like Sophia Loren), I will respect that but I wouldn't make a habit out of saying the name that way.

[sarahness.livejournal.com]

I know a girl named Moira, pronounced Mor-aye.

Her mom is some kinda backwoods redneck type, so I guess that makes sense.

[ladymela99.livejournal.com]

What amazes me is she has seen the name Moira in print.