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[Facts] Pronounce correctly X..ander
I gave this name to my son. Correct pronounce of his first name is. X .. ander. It never was meant to sound like the letter z, because it's the letter X. To give his name a z sound is just laziness.
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The only common English word where "X" at the start is pronounced like "ex" is X-ray, and that's because of the hyphen. Otherwise a word starting with "x" in English is normally pronounced with the "z" sound. If you want an alternative, it would be the pronunciation Ksander, using the normal sound of "x" in the middle of an English word. If you want this pronounced "Exander", it would be best to spell it that way or to use the hyphen, X-ander, as in X-ray.
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I thought Xavier in English started (roughly) with an X sound. Or was that only done in the X-Men to emphasise the X as happens visually throughout the films too
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It does make more sense to me that way, but I'm Dutch and KSAHN-dər is how it's pronounced for us.After clicking on it I see that is slso says it with an S- in Dutch, but I've NEVER heard it used in Dutch like that (we use Sander for that), so I'm not sure how that got there. But in English words with an X- start often start with a Z- sound, so some people might need some extra instruction to pronounce your son's name correctly.
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Alexander can and mostly does sound like Alec Zander. Xander can have many sounds; Zander only one, so that might be convenient. However, different languages pronounce letters, words etc in different ways. You will see that Alec, Zander and Xander appear in a different colour: if you click on each one in turn you will find information about its origin, pronunciation etc which might give you a more accurate perspective.
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yes.. but the /k/ phone in x is always lost and the combination reduced to voiced z when it's the initial letter in English - Xerox, xenophobic, xerography, xylophone, xylem, etc. since all these words are Greek in origin, they retain an approximation of Greek spelling, even though the pronunciation of initial x, and the y has changed in English.
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You can pronounce your son's name however you like, but it is not incorrect or lazy to pronounce an initial X as Z. How do you say "xylophone"?
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