Accent Marks?

How do you guys feel about using accent marks on names?

I’ve always loved when girls are named [name_m]Zo[/name_m]ë or boys are named Sören, but does the accent mark need to be there for visual purposes? Does Esmé look better as Esmé or [name_f]Esme[/name_f]? Or what about names that need the accent mark? Do people know that François is pronounced Frahn-swah or will they pronounce it as it looks Fran-coo-s? Does the accent mark just make it more confusing?

I want to hear your thoughts on accent marks and whether or not we should use them.

In a country where accent marks are used in other, every day words, it’s not a big deal. In English speaking countries though, they aren’t common and aren’t used on legal documents (or any other printed documents like school report cards, driver’s license, etc., I don’t think). I like the way they look, personally, if used correctly of course.

Hmm, well, personally I love them as I look at them and see pronunciation. I know, however, that not everyone will have that connection and that in the US you can’t register an accent mark (?).

I think you can here though.

I’m not a fan because I can’t imagine having to search for the punctuated letter in the symbols bar every time I type my name. What a pain!

Diacritical marks are necessary in languages that use them, because they are essentially (if not officially) different letters. In the Icelandic alphabet, for example, there are 14 vowels: a, á, e, é, i, í, o, ó, u, ú, y, ý, æ and ö. These are all different letters that make completely different sounds. I mean literally different letters, as in you recite the alphabet: A, ”, B, D, ”, E, É, etc. So in Icelandic it’s a big deal to get those diacritical marks where they are meant to be. Spelling a name [name_f]Asta[/name_f] instead of ”sta would be like spelling [name_f]Ester[/name_f] as Asther - just wrong.

However, I wouldn’t use them for decorative purposes, and I wouldn’t expect them to be used consistently in an English-speaking country, because although an English monoglot can see that there are dots over an ö, they don’t actually register it as a different letter from o. They don’t actually respond to the diacritical mark but altering their pronunciation at all, so it’s completely pointless to use it for them. Spelling it Sören won’t make English speakers pronounce it Sören, they are still going to be saying [name_m]Soren[/name_m].

So basically, it depends what languages you are working with. For English, for the vast majority of people they are pure decoration and as such a waste of time. And they’re a pain to type on a standard English keyboard. [name_f]My[/name_f] Icelandic keyboard is set up so that it takes just one extra stroke to type an accented vowel, but this is not the case for English set-ups.

I look at accent marks and see correct pronunciation, however, living in Australia, they are not a common occurrence so they may cause problems. However, this would not stop me from using a name where an accent is necessary. For example, I don’t like the name [name_f]Eugenie[/name_f], but I adore Eugénie.

You cannot use diacritical marks on official paperwork (birth certificates, SS cards, passports) in the United States. So [name_m]Zo[/name_m]ë may look nice, but will always be [name_f]Zoe[/name_f] officially. It sucks for us Americans who have last names that actually need an accent (like myself) but cannot use them. Technically, my “official” last name isn’t correct.

I don’t mind accents, I actually quite like them. Plus I know (from my limited knowledge of [name_m]French[/name_m] and [name_m]German[/name_m]) they can change pronunciation e.g. I’d say Ez-[name_f]May[/name_f] for Esmé(e), but Ez-mee for [name_f]Esme[/name_f]. Plus there are some names that I think look odd without accents, [name_u]Fran[/name_u]çois being one of them. I can see them possibly causing some problems online, for example, but not so much outside of that. But I also live in the UK, and I don’t think they’re as much of a problem here (don’t hold me on that, I’m really not sure). There’s a girl in my year who spells her name Chloë and she doesn’t seem to have any problems.

Thanks so much for saying this. My husband and I would love to use ”sta as one of our daughter’s middle names, but we can’t have accent marks on official US documents. It’ll just look like her name is pronounced Ass-ta without it. So annoying!

It depends. If the names (especially [name_m]French[/name_m] ones) are pronunced the right way then I’m all for it (and no, é does not make the Beyoncé “aye” sound). But since you’re most likey going to end up with the wrong pronunciation anyway, I say drop them at least in the first name spot. Esmé and Ophélie might look prettier with the accent but you’re still going to get (and some might even pronunce them this way themselves) Es-may and O-fay-lee instead of Es-meh (long euro e) and O-pheh-lee.

My name has an accent aigu and it’s gotten missed on paperwork most of my life. Some people look at my name and know better how to pronounce, but mostly people try to pronounce it however they want. I still wouldn’t remove this accent aigu because it would make my name incorrect. Plus, I live in a country where [name_m]French[/name_m] is the second language so I expect more people do understand the markings than in other countries.

I think in the Netherlands we’d take up a middle position in this discussion, in Dutch we mostly need diacritics for loan words and for spelling purposes because we need to be able to spell words like zeeën and geüpdate without having to hyphenate them. While you definitely won’t see a [name_m]Zo[/name_m]ë without the ë (otherwise it’s pronounced like ‘zoo’ in Dutch), there are some names which leave parents in doubt about using or not using the diacritic, like for [name_f]Fabienne[/name_f]. If you don’t use the ë people might spell it with anyway and if you do people might also spell it without. It takes a fair amount of guesswork, but the fact of the matter is that it will show up on your paperwork. I do love a good [name_m]French[/name_m] or Greek name spelled the [name_m]French[/name_m] way so that’s a risky business and while not every name needs the diacritic, some do, because for example I love Igoné, well that’s a disaster in English without the é, looks like it at least. I think that if people are very much misled about the correct pronunciation of the name without the diacritic - like [name_m]Soren[/name_m] vs. Sören - then I wouldn’t choose that name in a country not familiar with that diacritic, if people will know how to pronounce it without or you can correct them and it’ll still make sense, then don’t use it if it won’t show up anywhere I’d say, unless it’s the only correct spelling.

My name is supposed to have one. 90% of the time it gets dropped, and occasionally I’ll get a random symbol in place of the letter.
So in general, I think it’s pointless unless you live in a country where they are used in everyday typing.

This. Diacritical marks are not decoration. And it is rather annoying that diacritical marks don’t appear on official American documents, to say the least…

I wouldn’t use them as I can never remember how to type one on a computer, but I wouldn’t cringe if I saw one in a name. I know they can be legitimate spellings, so why not use one if you like them?

Perfectly worded response. I coined the term “name confetti” for misused accents on names. It really ruffles my feathers to see things like Rënèe or [name_m]Simon[/name_m]é (pronounced [name_u]Simone[/name_u], like [name_u]Raven[/name_u] [name_m]Simon[/name_m]é. This drives me CRAZY).
I can really appreciate when people use accents correctly in an English-speaking country, but unfortunately, in some of these countries, the accents won’t be legally registered, and the general public won’t know how to say the proper pronunciation anyway.

Well, I wouldn’t use an accented name. So any name that may possibly have an accented letter I’m not really fond of.
For example, I’m a bit iffy on [name_f]Renee[/name_f]. I know it has an accent over one of the letters, but I can’t remember which one. In addition, some sites change the accented letter to some random symbol.
The keyboard on my iPod allows me to type accented letters. There’s a word I type all the time with an é in it, and it drives me crazy when it’s just written as e.
I think unless you live in a country where accented letters are common recognized, I would avoid using a name with an accented letter.

I wouldn’t since I live in the US, and like many previous posters already said, it won’t be on official documents. It just ends up feeling pointless. Although, I am hoping that they are added on official documents soon because it’s gotten much easier; I know with my mac you just hold down the letter and you can pick which accent mark you want. Unfortunately, knowing the US, we’d end up with kids having names like Ēlîzæbęth and Kãthërįnê just because people want to make the child more “unique”…

So true!! I think it’s superfluous in the US (I’m excluding people who have a genuine connection to a language besides English). For the typical American, though, é is just a “pretty” e. I only know [name_m]French[/name_m] and [name_m]German[/name_m] accent marks because I studied them in college; otherwise I’d also just think they were decoration. We would usually make no distinction in pronunciation in [name_f]Zoe[/name_f] and [name_m]Zo[/name_m]ë, and that’s missing the whole point of accent marks.

People would do that for sure, haha! I already see this sort of thing sometimes on Facebook, people making their names ‘cooler’. It’s really funny if you are familiar with accents and special characters, because it makes you pronounce their names in a ridiculous way. Like someone reckons that ”avid looks cooler than [name_m]David[/name_m] and then you automatically read it as Thavid.

Incidentally I did some research on the situation for UK official documents recently and you are not allowed to use accented vowels on a British passport. So it seems like the UK is the same as the US on that - not sure about other documents, birth certificate, driving licence etc.

I will definitely have a child with accented letters in her name (they’re already in the patronymic so it doesn’t matter which names we pick as first names), so I guess she will just have to have a slightly different official spelling in each country. It’s kind of lame but that’s how it is.