Someone Writes An Outrageous Email Saying This Woman Doesn’t Know How To Pronounce Her Name And It Backfires
Everyone who’s pretty active on social media has had at least one strange encounter with another person that left them a bit baffled. Whether it’s in the form of an email, Facebook comment, or a tweet, some people deliver the strangest and sometimes even the most unwelcome reminders of their presence. Recently, one of them became an unknown person who decided to write an email to a political correspondent named Ailbhe Rea.
Recently, a woman named Ailbhe Rea shared an email she received from someone telling her how to correctly pronounce her name
Image credits: PronouncedAlva
The person felt somewhat “personally attacked” when they saw Rea’s Twitter handle, which reads: PronouncedAlva. It prompted the stranger to write a lengthy email explaining to Rea that she has no idea how to pronounce her own name. Luckily, this internet stranger was there to correct her. Not.
Image credits: PronouncedAlva
Image credits: PronouncedAlva
However, her mom and other native Irish speakers had a different idea than the rude Irish student
Image credits: PronouncedAlva
Rea just couldn’t help but share the cringy email with her followers and it quickly went viral. After reading the email, fluent Irish speakers stepped up to say that the stranger couldn’t be more wrong with their correction, while others decided to painfully roast the Irish language student.
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Here’s how other people reacted
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Share on FacebookI love that joke, and that actually happened to my friend David.
Load More Replies...I think that a name is pronounced however the name's owner wants it to be pronounced.
Correction: a name SHOULD BE pronounced however the name's owner wants it to be pronounced. It IS pronounced only as close as they can managed to teach people. I struggled with that most of my life-- most people hear Nadya (two syllables, Nad-ya) and their brain corrects it to Nadia (three syllables, Nad-ee-ah). Or they just refuse to listen. Something like that... Either way, I've had a choice between spending a few minutes of every introduction to a new person attempting to get them to pronounce my name correctly, or going through life being called by the wrong name. Basically a choice between the frustration of running into a wall over and over again, or the subtler hopelessness of apathy from not having the energy to care anymore. I changed my name recently for other reasons, and realized only looking back just how much pain and frustration that bad pronunciation caused me.
Load More Replies...Are you a Pisces? Do you work for scale wages?
Load More Replies...I was once told by a rather rude woman my name wasn't my name. That it didn't exist (this was despite a popular character made it more commonly known). I mean sure... By that point, I'd only ever met one other Lara but it was in the book Doctor Shivago. Anyway... She told me my name was in fact Laura and was spelled thusly and refused to call me Lara. Actually said the words "you're being nonsensical and trying to be cool. Nobody would make their child that!"... People can be real arseholes.
If someone is at that point in their lives that they go full Karen on your name, you better ask them for the manager in return to complain about their flawed logic.
Load More Replies...I grew up with an Eastern European last name that nobody ever pronounced correctly, so I have a lot of sensitivity about getting people’s names right. I also worked in the hospitality industry for a couple decades, where I encountered people from all over the world. When I came upon an unfamiliar name, I would make an attempt to pronounce it if I thought I could, but would more often respectfully ask the person for the correct pronunciation, so I’d have it right the next time. Most people are more than happy to teach you how to pronounce their name correctly, and delighted that you’re so interested in getting it right. A person’s name should be respected. It is theirs, it identifies them, sometimes it defines them. But we should always try to get it right. Even if we think they’re not spelling or pronouncing it correctly, we should respect the way they have tailored it to themselves. Just like we’d want someone to do for us.
My baptismal name is pronounced so different in the US from UK from my mom's country that I ended up using a nickname everyone said the same! (And, thank you for asking how to pronounce a name. No, it's not always as it's spelled, nor spelled as it sounds. *sigh*)
Load More Replies...The fact is there are people out there who think they know better than you what your name is. They're not all men, either. One woman I knew tried to tell another friend called Cheryl that her name was pronounced with a hard CH as in chair. They had an argument about it. What I find most disturbing here is all the people saying 'pronounciation'
Yes, they should work on that pronOunciation and pronunce things better heh. Loquaciest person for the goal!
Load More Replies...I have had people telling me that I am mispronouncing my own name wrongly! It's Maori and I live in Australia. My daughter has an Aboriginal name (her father is Koori) and she has also been told that she is pronouncing her own name incorrectly by non-Aboriginal people! Mansplaining or Womansplaining is rife worldwide!
How do you pronounce it? To me it looks like Mar-ruh-muh. I love unusual names so I am interested in the real way.
Load More Replies...I used to work at a hotel in a Gaeltacht in Donegal. I promise you, every other week during tourist season you'd get some non-native Irish speaking jerk like this coming in and giving away such quality "free" linguistic lessons to the locals. It seems to be this very strange thing among Irish language students--perhaps having the genius mental capacity to master such a difficult language expends all their brain cells, leaving them entirely bereft of any capacity to understand how to properly function socially.
Oh the pain I've had with my name. A woman I worked with told me it is pronounced with an a in her country, so she insisted on calling me Odetta. Since that is not my name, I never responded when she called me.
I have had people try and tell me that my first name was pronounced pay-gee, pay-i-gee, paw-gee, and even peggy. And it astounds me how many people pronounce Jordan as Gordon! One day a few years ago my husband, shortly before he passed, spent a good half hour on the phone arguing with a telemarketer about how to pronounce my name. Unfortunately I was at work and missed the show. But the story was one for the record books!
My name is Jennie, I get called Genie so often I want to scream! How is an ie ending so much harder to grasp than the more common y ending? Grrr
Load More Replies...Some names are cursed with being annoyed by stubborn people. My first name is Tangi. This is a Breton name, from Brittany in France. There is a francized version of the name, that is Tanguy, because "gi" would be pronounced like "ji" in French. But not in Breton. It's not like it's a name that doesn't exist, and it's not even like it's a foreign name. It's literally from France. And from as far as I can remember, there were always people trying to correct my name. Either they were trying to turn it into Tanguy or they were insisting on calling me Tanji. Sometimes, it gets really annoying. I remember when I subscribed for an internet connexion, I told them my name and spelled it. They repeated as "T A N G U Y". I said no, it's T A N G I". "Oh sorry, so T A N G U I". No "T A N G I". "Ah ok, that's weird, haha". And then when I got my first bill, the name was Tangy.
Tangi is also a maori (nz) word for a funeral...I wonder if the pronunciation is similar to your name (forgive my ignorance pls), it has a 'ng' like 'ing' but hard at the end...Like tah-nngg(soft g)-gi(hard g sound Like ghee)
Load More Replies...It was a fun read until they started calling it mansplaining and misogyny. You don't even know the emailer's gender! Good grief.
There's a reason I go by "Rose" and not "Róisín" It's pronounced kind of like "row-sheen"/"Ro-sheen" or, iirc in Northern Irish it may be "rosh-een" and means "little rose" but apparently to those who do not understand Irish pronunciation, it's "roy-sin" or "roy-zin" and then there are some who are especially dumb they don't understand the "S" makes a "Sh" noise without a h and who will actually argue that I don't know how to pronounce my own name. :) I also know someone who pronounces "Saoirse" as "Cerise" no matter how many times I correct them lmao.
I've been told numerous times that Jennie MUST be short for Jennifer and I'm just mistaken and don't know my own name, really?!? Jennie is short for Jennie-Lind which is my actual full first name, don't even get me started on how many people argue with me when I say I don't have a middle name. Nope, Jennie-Lind is my first name, no middle name, would you like to see my birth certificate, a*****e? 40+ years of this s**t
I had an accounting professor who said your name can be spelled "Black," and you can pronounce it "Brown." it's your name, and you can pronounce it anyway you like. Don't remember why that was being discussed in accounting.
When I came to the US, everyone was pronouncing my name (Áine) as Eye-knee. So I reverted to Ann for convenience. Áine is pronounced Awn-ya in Éire.
And it's such a pretty name. Too bad people insist on butchering it in stead of asking and actually listening if they don't know it.
Load More Replies...I don't speak any kind of Gaelic, and even I knew to pronounce her name as "Alva". Also, I completely missed her Twitter handle while I was reading this. Also also, Dara O' Feckin' Briain!
This reminds me of a time when I was in a women's chorus, learning a song that the chorus leader had written. One know-it-all woman, ignorant of the fact that he was the composer, said something like, "you sang an F there instead of a G." He replied, "I do know the melody quite well."
Well, I'd never seen the name 'Ailbhe' before but I figured it must be pronounced "Al-vuh" i.e. Alva... went with my gut instinct and it was correct. Think it resonated after I'd been educated on the correct pronunciation of "Siobhan" but I would NEVER tell someone how to pronounce THEIR name! *Mind boggled*
I think you'll find it's actually pronounced Steve. I had a friend called Bob and he was wrong about it too his whole life.
Load More Replies...I lived in the Western Highlands of Scotland for years, the bh in any Gaelic word was pronounced v
I chucked a little when I realized that the Bored Panda author was Andželika. ("Angelica", approximately?)
On another note; My name is Kristin, always have been. It´s not like Elon Musks kids name, right? But for some, or many reasons it seems impossible for a lot of people to grasp! I have been called many similar-ish names both in person (even if they have known me for a while) and in e-mails where the sender is Kristin and I sign Kristin - "Oh hello KristinA!" I have collegues at work that just this week said "katrin...kris... what is your name again?" and a few weeks ago I actually called someone and said "Hi, it´s Kristin West" and he said "Oh hi KristinA, how nice to hear from you!" Either my name is impossible to learn for a lot of people, or I am so easy to forget that whatever I say is forgotten a second after and I´m a new person in front of them.
Nah, i don't think so. My name is Karina and a lot of people call me Katharina the first time they meet me. That name is far more common where I'm from, so everyone just assumes that they misheard the first time. Or they calling me Karin, because they skipped the A while reading my name.
Load More Replies...This person probably studied other things and knows how to perform heart surgery and that vaccines are bad too. :) "Studied" can mean so many things. ;-)
It wouldn't matter if the jerk who wrote the email was right about the official pronunciation, If the woman he's writing to pronounces her name 'alva', then her name is pronounced 'alva', full stop. My rule of thumb for how to pronounce Gaelic names is they're pronounced however someone tells me they're pronounced. ;D I also harbor the suspicion that the spellings look like alphabet soup to English-speakers because the speakers of Gaelic languages, pissed off at the English (with good reason, especially the Irish and Welsh), decided that would be a great way to f**k with the English. Deliberately use letters and dipthongs that, in English, don't make the sound they're intended to indicate ('bh' for the 'v' sound? Really?), then sit back and laugh their asses off watching the English struggle to make any sense of written Gaelic languages. XD I'm not serious, of course.
I am a Green Bay Packer fan. This reminds me that if you go by spelling, Brett Favre would be in trouble. too. (For those who don't know, it's pronounced Farv).
I am Greek, I speak Greek. Been speaking Greek for almost 40 years. I politely corrected a guy on youtube on how to pronounce a Greek name and he got angry at me, saying he studied greek mythology for years and what's my source? (I;m Greek that's my source!!) To his credit, he did his own search after that and apologized when he realized he was wrong
Her name, she can pronounce it any way she wants to (even pronouncing it “larry” if it suits her).
For the commenter that thought the Mansplainer was from the USA. Not a chance. Nobody here studies Irish.
My name is damn easy to say and yet people still say it wrong. How hard is it to say Tiff-a-knee? I still get "Tiff knee and this is an easy name!
People have trouble with my first name and even more trouble with my middle name. It's gets annoying after a while. My mum has an unusual spelling of her name (it's Irish) and people regularly tell her that she spells her name wrongly as there are a couple of other spellings that are more widespread. Names are so important that I think it's only fair we all try to get it right for each other.
This reminds me of my parents naming my sister “Elena,” pronounced, perfectly properly in various locales, as “Él-ah-na.” It was a nod to my mom’s name Eleanor. Imagine the family’s chagrin when, after 20 years of answering to Él-ah-na, she declared that per her fiancé’s dictate (he was of Spanish descent but looked like the Pillsbury Doughboy) she would henceforth be known as Ā-lā-nah. Took us a brave few years to get used to that.
and this kids is why we don't try to explain s**t we don't have a clue about
Seosamh is pronounced Joseph? I thought the celts were just taking the p**s when I found out why I'd never met a Show-ban (Sioban) in my life. At 37. Ireland's a ferry away from me.
I had my name mispronounced a lot when I was younger. It's Just Dana (Day-na) but it got pronounced Dan-a so often. I've met plenty of others with my name, spelled the same way. Not a single one ever pronounced it Dan-a, and I'm still trying to find someone who does. There has to be someone out there who does with how many freaking times I heard it. Then again, I've also been called Christina a few times and I just... What? I honestly have no idea how that happened, but it's happened a few times with different people, so maybe I just look more like a Christine. Idk lol
The emailer cannot even distinguish between -ed/ -ing adjectives, beginning the email "I was fascinating", instead of "fascinated". All they amount to is annoying.
Anyone can pronounce their own name the way they want to. But if you're going to name your child, make sure it actually IS the name you think it is. There's some key differences between Scottish Gaelic and Irish Gaelic, even the word Gaelic is pronounced differently (Scottish is pronounced 'gallic') so you might find the same name will be pronounced differently depending on whether they're Scots or Irish. My daughter gets this all the time from people who pronounce her name as it's written, not even that uncommon of a name either..
French names stump people, as well, but they, too, like to act as if the correct pronunciation is their way. A clinic receptionist had called my daughter's last name, Lussier, as "Luss-ee-r". I told her it's "Loo-see-yay". She rolled her eyes and pronounced it her way again but louder and sharper as if we, and my daughter's dad's family were wrong. I can't imagine how anyone gets up the nerve to be so damn rude.
A friend has a daughter called “Ceilidh” which is pronounced Kaylee. Another friend has a a son called Sileas and they say “sil-ay-us” even though I think it’s pronounced as Shyla. Both have a life of mispronunciation of their names, so what if they choose THEIR way of saying it
I don't think! I know! Rodney is pronounced Dave! (Only Fools and Horses.)
To the Twitter respondent named Kevin McDermott @kevmacd: I believe the Irish spelling of our first name is Coebhin.
I always have non-Irish speakers struggling to pronounce my name (it's pronounced Kweeva in the Republic)
Leaving aside whether the emailer was at all right about the official pronunciation of the name, they were wrong to correct the way a person pronounces their own name. The point of names is that they are a marker of who the person is, both for other people to keep track of who is who and for the person in question to define themself. If the person in question had been using a "wrong" (non-traditional) pronunciation, so what? It adds individualism!
I personally have spent most of my life with a non-traditional nickname for a somewhat more traditional, but uncommon where I live, name. "Nadyezhda," nickname "Nadya". The typical nickname is "Nadia," and most people can't manage to make the switch even after I explain. Nad-ya, two syllables, versus Nad-E-ah, three syllables, which everyone defaults to. But it's not like I could really go by the full name either-- it's annoyingly hard to teach people how to pronounce it. And when they're trying to figure it out themselves from the spelling? Even with the Y my parents added to facilitate things (I'm told the direct phonetic transcription from Russian is Nadezhda, which does NOT properly convey the pronunciation to most English speakers) people struggle. I learned pretty quickly to look for a confused expression and listen for "Nnn...?" when new or substitute teachers called roll, because they were unlikely to get much further than that, and if they did it would be unrecognizable.
Load More Replies...Knew a guy who's name was spelled "Hen3ry" - Pronounced "Henry" (the 3 is silent). Seems to me that you should be able to pronounce your name however the hell you want!
I'm equally stunned by the original post and the subsequent responses focused on pronunciation. How does a person have the gal to even believe that it is their right to decide what another's personal/family choice in the first place?!
I'm surprised at the number of people who think it's "pronunciation" instead of "pronunciation"
Ailbhe isn't actually an uncommon name in Ireland, Jeffrey.
Load More Replies...I love that joke, and that actually happened to my friend David.
Load More Replies...I think that a name is pronounced however the name's owner wants it to be pronounced.
Correction: a name SHOULD BE pronounced however the name's owner wants it to be pronounced. It IS pronounced only as close as they can managed to teach people. I struggled with that most of my life-- most people hear Nadya (two syllables, Nad-ya) and their brain corrects it to Nadia (three syllables, Nad-ee-ah). Or they just refuse to listen. Something like that... Either way, I've had a choice between spending a few minutes of every introduction to a new person attempting to get them to pronounce my name correctly, or going through life being called by the wrong name. Basically a choice between the frustration of running into a wall over and over again, or the subtler hopelessness of apathy from not having the energy to care anymore. I changed my name recently for other reasons, and realized only looking back just how much pain and frustration that bad pronunciation caused me.
Load More Replies...Are you a Pisces? Do you work for scale wages?
Load More Replies...I was once told by a rather rude woman my name wasn't my name. That it didn't exist (this was despite a popular character made it more commonly known). I mean sure... By that point, I'd only ever met one other Lara but it was in the book Doctor Shivago. Anyway... She told me my name was in fact Laura and was spelled thusly and refused to call me Lara. Actually said the words "you're being nonsensical and trying to be cool. Nobody would make their child that!"... People can be real arseholes.
If someone is at that point in their lives that they go full Karen on your name, you better ask them for the manager in return to complain about their flawed logic.
Load More Replies...I grew up with an Eastern European last name that nobody ever pronounced correctly, so I have a lot of sensitivity about getting people’s names right. I also worked in the hospitality industry for a couple decades, where I encountered people from all over the world. When I came upon an unfamiliar name, I would make an attempt to pronounce it if I thought I could, but would more often respectfully ask the person for the correct pronunciation, so I’d have it right the next time. Most people are more than happy to teach you how to pronounce their name correctly, and delighted that you’re so interested in getting it right. A person’s name should be respected. It is theirs, it identifies them, sometimes it defines them. But we should always try to get it right. Even if we think they’re not spelling or pronouncing it correctly, we should respect the way they have tailored it to themselves. Just like we’d want someone to do for us.
My baptismal name is pronounced so different in the US from UK from my mom's country that I ended up using a nickname everyone said the same! (And, thank you for asking how to pronounce a name. No, it's not always as it's spelled, nor spelled as it sounds. *sigh*)
Load More Replies...The fact is there are people out there who think they know better than you what your name is. They're not all men, either. One woman I knew tried to tell another friend called Cheryl that her name was pronounced with a hard CH as in chair. They had an argument about it. What I find most disturbing here is all the people saying 'pronounciation'
Yes, they should work on that pronOunciation and pronunce things better heh. Loquaciest person for the goal!
Load More Replies...I have had people telling me that I am mispronouncing my own name wrongly! It's Maori and I live in Australia. My daughter has an Aboriginal name (her father is Koori) and she has also been told that she is pronouncing her own name incorrectly by non-Aboriginal people! Mansplaining or Womansplaining is rife worldwide!
How do you pronounce it? To me it looks like Mar-ruh-muh. I love unusual names so I am interested in the real way.
Load More Replies...I used to work at a hotel in a Gaeltacht in Donegal. I promise you, every other week during tourist season you'd get some non-native Irish speaking jerk like this coming in and giving away such quality "free" linguistic lessons to the locals. It seems to be this very strange thing among Irish language students--perhaps having the genius mental capacity to master such a difficult language expends all their brain cells, leaving them entirely bereft of any capacity to understand how to properly function socially.
Oh the pain I've had with my name. A woman I worked with told me it is pronounced with an a in her country, so she insisted on calling me Odetta. Since that is not my name, I never responded when she called me.
I have had people try and tell me that my first name was pronounced pay-gee, pay-i-gee, paw-gee, and even peggy. And it astounds me how many people pronounce Jordan as Gordon! One day a few years ago my husband, shortly before he passed, spent a good half hour on the phone arguing with a telemarketer about how to pronounce my name. Unfortunately I was at work and missed the show. But the story was one for the record books!
My name is Jennie, I get called Genie so often I want to scream! How is an ie ending so much harder to grasp than the more common y ending? Grrr
Load More Replies...Some names are cursed with being annoyed by stubborn people. My first name is Tangi. This is a Breton name, from Brittany in France. There is a francized version of the name, that is Tanguy, because "gi" would be pronounced like "ji" in French. But not in Breton. It's not like it's a name that doesn't exist, and it's not even like it's a foreign name. It's literally from France. And from as far as I can remember, there were always people trying to correct my name. Either they were trying to turn it into Tanguy or they were insisting on calling me Tanji. Sometimes, it gets really annoying. I remember when I subscribed for an internet connexion, I told them my name and spelled it. They repeated as "T A N G U Y". I said no, it's T A N G I". "Oh sorry, so T A N G U I". No "T A N G I". "Ah ok, that's weird, haha". And then when I got my first bill, the name was Tangy.
Tangi is also a maori (nz) word for a funeral...I wonder if the pronunciation is similar to your name (forgive my ignorance pls), it has a 'ng' like 'ing' but hard at the end...Like tah-nngg(soft g)-gi(hard g sound Like ghee)
Load More Replies...It was a fun read until they started calling it mansplaining and misogyny. You don't even know the emailer's gender! Good grief.
There's a reason I go by "Rose" and not "Róisín" It's pronounced kind of like "row-sheen"/"Ro-sheen" or, iirc in Northern Irish it may be "rosh-een" and means "little rose" but apparently to those who do not understand Irish pronunciation, it's "roy-sin" or "roy-zin" and then there are some who are especially dumb they don't understand the "S" makes a "Sh" noise without a h and who will actually argue that I don't know how to pronounce my own name. :) I also know someone who pronounces "Saoirse" as "Cerise" no matter how many times I correct them lmao.
I've been told numerous times that Jennie MUST be short for Jennifer and I'm just mistaken and don't know my own name, really?!? Jennie is short for Jennie-Lind which is my actual full first name, don't even get me started on how many people argue with me when I say I don't have a middle name. Nope, Jennie-Lind is my first name, no middle name, would you like to see my birth certificate, a*****e? 40+ years of this s**t
I had an accounting professor who said your name can be spelled "Black," and you can pronounce it "Brown." it's your name, and you can pronounce it anyway you like. Don't remember why that was being discussed in accounting.
When I came to the US, everyone was pronouncing my name (Áine) as Eye-knee. So I reverted to Ann for convenience. Áine is pronounced Awn-ya in Éire.
And it's such a pretty name. Too bad people insist on butchering it in stead of asking and actually listening if they don't know it.
Load More Replies...I don't speak any kind of Gaelic, and even I knew to pronounce her name as "Alva". Also, I completely missed her Twitter handle while I was reading this. Also also, Dara O' Feckin' Briain!
This reminds me of a time when I was in a women's chorus, learning a song that the chorus leader had written. One know-it-all woman, ignorant of the fact that he was the composer, said something like, "you sang an F there instead of a G." He replied, "I do know the melody quite well."
Well, I'd never seen the name 'Ailbhe' before but I figured it must be pronounced "Al-vuh" i.e. Alva... went with my gut instinct and it was correct. Think it resonated after I'd been educated on the correct pronunciation of "Siobhan" but I would NEVER tell someone how to pronounce THEIR name! *Mind boggled*
I think you'll find it's actually pronounced Steve. I had a friend called Bob and he was wrong about it too his whole life.
Load More Replies...I lived in the Western Highlands of Scotland for years, the bh in any Gaelic word was pronounced v
I chucked a little when I realized that the Bored Panda author was Andželika. ("Angelica", approximately?)
On another note; My name is Kristin, always have been. It´s not like Elon Musks kids name, right? But for some, or many reasons it seems impossible for a lot of people to grasp! I have been called many similar-ish names both in person (even if they have known me for a while) and in e-mails where the sender is Kristin and I sign Kristin - "Oh hello KristinA!" I have collegues at work that just this week said "katrin...kris... what is your name again?" and a few weeks ago I actually called someone and said "Hi, it´s Kristin West" and he said "Oh hi KristinA, how nice to hear from you!" Either my name is impossible to learn for a lot of people, or I am so easy to forget that whatever I say is forgotten a second after and I´m a new person in front of them.
Nah, i don't think so. My name is Karina and a lot of people call me Katharina the first time they meet me. That name is far more common where I'm from, so everyone just assumes that they misheard the first time. Or they calling me Karin, because they skipped the A while reading my name.
Load More Replies...This person probably studied other things and knows how to perform heart surgery and that vaccines are bad too. :) "Studied" can mean so many things. ;-)
It wouldn't matter if the jerk who wrote the email was right about the official pronunciation, If the woman he's writing to pronounces her name 'alva', then her name is pronounced 'alva', full stop. My rule of thumb for how to pronounce Gaelic names is they're pronounced however someone tells me they're pronounced. ;D I also harbor the suspicion that the spellings look like alphabet soup to English-speakers because the speakers of Gaelic languages, pissed off at the English (with good reason, especially the Irish and Welsh), decided that would be a great way to f**k with the English. Deliberately use letters and dipthongs that, in English, don't make the sound they're intended to indicate ('bh' for the 'v' sound? Really?), then sit back and laugh their asses off watching the English struggle to make any sense of written Gaelic languages. XD I'm not serious, of course.
I am a Green Bay Packer fan. This reminds me that if you go by spelling, Brett Favre would be in trouble. too. (For those who don't know, it's pronounced Farv).
I am Greek, I speak Greek. Been speaking Greek for almost 40 years. I politely corrected a guy on youtube on how to pronounce a Greek name and he got angry at me, saying he studied greek mythology for years and what's my source? (I;m Greek that's my source!!) To his credit, he did his own search after that and apologized when he realized he was wrong
Her name, she can pronounce it any way she wants to (even pronouncing it “larry” if it suits her).
For the commenter that thought the Mansplainer was from the USA. Not a chance. Nobody here studies Irish.
My name is damn easy to say and yet people still say it wrong. How hard is it to say Tiff-a-knee? I still get "Tiff knee and this is an easy name!
People have trouble with my first name and even more trouble with my middle name. It's gets annoying after a while. My mum has an unusual spelling of her name (it's Irish) and people regularly tell her that she spells her name wrongly as there are a couple of other spellings that are more widespread. Names are so important that I think it's only fair we all try to get it right for each other.
This reminds me of my parents naming my sister “Elena,” pronounced, perfectly properly in various locales, as “Él-ah-na.” It was a nod to my mom’s name Eleanor. Imagine the family’s chagrin when, after 20 years of answering to Él-ah-na, she declared that per her fiancé’s dictate (he was of Spanish descent but looked like the Pillsbury Doughboy) she would henceforth be known as Ā-lā-nah. Took us a brave few years to get used to that.
and this kids is why we don't try to explain s**t we don't have a clue about
Seosamh is pronounced Joseph? I thought the celts were just taking the p**s when I found out why I'd never met a Show-ban (Sioban) in my life. At 37. Ireland's a ferry away from me.
I had my name mispronounced a lot when I was younger. It's Just Dana (Day-na) but it got pronounced Dan-a so often. I've met plenty of others with my name, spelled the same way. Not a single one ever pronounced it Dan-a, and I'm still trying to find someone who does. There has to be someone out there who does with how many freaking times I heard it. Then again, I've also been called Christina a few times and I just... What? I honestly have no idea how that happened, but it's happened a few times with different people, so maybe I just look more like a Christine. Idk lol
The emailer cannot even distinguish between -ed/ -ing adjectives, beginning the email "I was fascinating", instead of "fascinated". All they amount to is annoying.
Anyone can pronounce their own name the way they want to. But if you're going to name your child, make sure it actually IS the name you think it is. There's some key differences between Scottish Gaelic and Irish Gaelic, even the word Gaelic is pronounced differently (Scottish is pronounced 'gallic') so you might find the same name will be pronounced differently depending on whether they're Scots or Irish. My daughter gets this all the time from people who pronounce her name as it's written, not even that uncommon of a name either..
French names stump people, as well, but they, too, like to act as if the correct pronunciation is their way. A clinic receptionist had called my daughter's last name, Lussier, as "Luss-ee-r". I told her it's "Loo-see-yay". She rolled her eyes and pronounced it her way again but louder and sharper as if we, and my daughter's dad's family were wrong. I can't imagine how anyone gets up the nerve to be so damn rude.
A friend has a daughter called “Ceilidh” which is pronounced Kaylee. Another friend has a a son called Sileas and they say “sil-ay-us” even though I think it’s pronounced as Shyla. Both have a life of mispronunciation of their names, so what if they choose THEIR way of saying it
I don't think! I know! Rodney is pronounced Dave! (Only Fools and Horses.)
To the Twitter respondent named Kevin McDermott @kevmacd: I believe the Irish spelling of our first name is Coebhin.
I always have non-Irish speakers struggling to pronounce my name (it's pronounced Kweeva in the Republic)
Leaving aside whether the emailer was at all right about the official pronunciation of the name, they were wrong to correct the way a person pronounces their own name. The point of names is that they are a marker of who the person is, both for other people to keep track of who is who and for the person in question to define themself. If the person in question had been using a "wrong" (non-traditional) pronunciation, so what? It adds individualism!
I personally have spent most of my life with a non-traditional nickname for a somewhat more traditional, but uncommon where I live, name. "Nadyezhda," nickname "Nadya". The typical nickname is "Nadia," and most people can't manage to make the switch even after I explain. Nad-ya, two syllables, versus Nad-E-ah, three syllables, which everyone defaults to. But it's not like I could really go by the full name either-- it's annoyingly hard to teach people how to pronounce it. And when they're trying to figure it out themselves from the spelling? Even with the Y my parents added to facilitate things (I'm told the direct phonetic transcription from Russian is Nadezhda, which does NOT properly convey the pronunciation to most English speakers) people struggle. I learned pretty quickly to look for a confused expression and listen for "Nnn...?" when new or substitute teachers called roll, because they were unlikely to get much further than that, and if they did it would be unrecognizable.
Load More Replies...Knew a guy who's name was spelled "Hen3ry" - Pronounced "Henry" (the 3 is silent). Seems to me that you should be able to pronounce your name however the hell you want!
I'm equally stunned by the original post and the subsequent responses focused on pronunciation. How does a person have the gal to even believe that it is their right to decide what another's personal/family choice in the first place?!
I'm surprised at the number of people who think it's "pronunciation" instead of "pronunciation"
Ailbhe isn't actually an uncommon name in Ireland, Jeffrey.
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