View Message

What names are hard for you to pronounce?
For example, for me, names with multiple p's are hard. I.e. Pippa and Piper. I also have a problem with names ending in l like Kyle and Gail. (I'm not Asian or anything)
Archived Thread - replies disabled
vote up1

Replies

Aurora
vote up1
For some reason I always read Alastair as "Alas-stare" even though I know that is nowhere close to how it's pronounced. Aurora is a bit of a pain, too.
vote up1
Geneive ( how do you spell it)
Dahlia, Yolanda, Abiela, Shannon, Cheryl, Rory, Daniela, Salem,
vote up1
Anais
Arantxa
Asbjörn
Deirdre
Fikriye
Gioia
Güllüsüm
Loic
Nilüfer
Shachar
Sinead
Siobhan
Saoirse
Pier
Ruarc
Taifun
Thais
Ueli
Uxue
Zsa-Zsa
vote up1
My daughter goes to school with an Uxue and they all pronounce her name wrong. I've tried to correct my daughter to what her mother told me is the proper pronunciation, but no luck...
vote up1
Some hard consonant - hard consonant names can be really hard to say, make you trip over yourself.
Same for soft - soft or th-f f-th sounds repeated together.Guess where some of my family is from when I say 'l' is a bugger I trip over from time to time when I'm talking fast, especially when it's paired with a hard consonant. I never have managed to teach most of my grandfather's family to say 'film' in one syllable, it was always two syllables. Fortunately said names are rare, much rarer than words.Th/ph/f English orthographies can be confusing even for a native speaker. And I'm still not sure I'm saying Phineas right. Spiky names with lots of consonants will trip me up as well if I'm chatting away.I am good at mimicking sounds so if I hear a name I can usually get it down pretty well after a few times, so I guess names are harder for me to pronounce if I have to guess how to say it based on how they're spelled. That's where I'd struggle. I can get the pronunciation from Irish, Russian and French names almost all of the time, and a lot of people struggle with those, but there are definitely some other languages where I do not get how the sounds match up with the words (or anglicisations).Oh and Greer... yes...what is that. Is it one syllable? Two syllables? Those names that can have two syllables or be very mushy and soft confuse me a lot.

This message was edited 1/19/2022, 1:58 PM

vote up1
Rory
Greer
Timothy (I tend to say either Timoty or Thimothy)
Eulelia, which is ironic considering the meaning
Scheherazade and other long names where to amount of syllables isn't very straightforward to me And many names originated from languages I don't speak
vote up2
Aurora
vote up3
100% agree!Aurora is so awkward to say.

This message was edited 1/19/2022, 11:45 AM

vote up1
Yes!, that's another one for me, same with Rory.

This message was edited 1/19/2022, 11:30 AM

vote up1
Exactly!
vote up1
Anaïs. I always want to say a-NYE-is but I know that's wrong.
vote up2
Yes, it's A-na-EES. I don't blame you, the pronunciation isn't exactly obvious
vote up1
It's not even that it's hard to figure out, it's just awkward to say. Maybe if I spoke French it wouldn't sound so clumsy when I say it.
vote up1
Valerie and Brooklynn: my name is Valerie and I always went by Val, so now, Valerie is hard for me to say. Brooklynn is my sister's name and I always screw up and call her Birklynn which annoys me
vote up1
I don't have a problem with Brooklyn, however Brook by itself is kind of awkward for me because I want to pronounce the 'oo' like in 'soon' but I know it's more of an 'uh' sound.
vote up1