I just wanted to ask how do you guys feel about accented names? (Ex: Anaïse, [name_f]Alaïa[/name_f], Cécelia) [name_f]Do[/name_f] you think it looks pretty but doesn’t necessarily sound it? Would you use one yourself? [name_m]Just[/name_m] curious.
I love the name [name_f]Séraphine[/name_f] and would love to use it as a combo but I’m not sure that’s legal in the US…
Well, accented names do look pretty, in my opinion. I wouldn’t use them solely for that reason though. Sometimes I prefer accented names because they are not the anglicized version, like Róisín for example.
Also, why wouldn’t Séraphine be legal in the US?
A bit long, but here are my thoughts on French and Spanish accents…
I like them if they are pronounced correctly. Anais vs Anaïs, for example, makes more sense than Ophélie in an English context. Spanish José also makes more sense to me than French Léo.
Why? Because the dots on the Ï or Ë in French names serve a different function than the French É does, which again serves a different purpose than the Spanish É.
The two dots on a vowel such as Ï tell the speaker that the two vowels are pronounced individually, so ah-nah-ees rather than ah-nyes. Or in the case of Raphaël, rah-fah-ell rather than ra-fel.
In Spanish, accents don’t change the pronunciation of the letter but rather show the speaker where the emphasis lies. Spanish words usually have their emphasis on the second-to-last syllable, such as in the word “im-por-TAN-cia” (ia is regarded as one sound), so if the emphasis is placed on a different syllable, an accent is used on the vowel in that syllable, such as in “co-mu-ni-ca-ción”, where the stress is placed on the last syllable.
Same goes for José, which is now jo-SE rather than JO-se.
Here, accents make sense to me, even in an English-speaking country, because the sound doesn’t change
The é in French tells the speaker that the pronunciation/sound of the E changes, and not to the AY sound as many English speakers seem to think. In French, a vowel doesn’t make two sounds unlike it is often the case in English.
In English, the A is often pronounced “ay” in words like “late”, the position of the mouth changes - in French you would need to add another vowel to get that sound.
This is why I’m against using French accents in names that are then not actually pronounced with the French É sound.
Edit. I’m not familiar with Irish sounds/letters, however, as Irish names aren’t intuitively pronounced anyway (unless you’re Irish, of course), it makes sense to keep the accents, Roisin doesn’t exist as a name in English, especially not one that would have a similar pronunciation to Irish Róisín. French is one of the languages that influenced English the most and so French names are familiar and pronounced very similar to the French versions - which is why I think adding an accent would then require the same pronunciation as in French.
Well, maybe not so much it’s illegal. Anyone’s name in the US can legally be anything you use. But many official bureaucratic computer systems cannot accept anything beyond the base 26 Latin letters, in upper and lower case – often not even a hyphen, apostrophe, or space. If that makes sense.
This is exactly my only hesitation with accent names.
My middle name, chosen by myself, is Séamus. I’m in the US. I always, always write it with the fada (ie accent) and ensure to the best of my ability it’s spelled correctly on non-legal documents. And I’m a theatre artist who uses “Jack Séamus” in my work, so my middle name comes up a LOT, perhaps more than the average person lol. But legally, my middle name is Seamus (no fada) to avoid that very headache of bureaucratic systems not being able to do accents.
Is Seraphine legally, but Séraphine otherwise / colloquially, a possible option?
I’m in complete agreement with @OpheliaFlora!
I grew up and live in a French speaking country. I am English but have a residency permit for the country I live in. For all intents and purposes, I feel more nationality towards the country I grew up in rather than the country I was born in and only lived a short amount of time in. Therefore, I feel I can answer this question justifiably. My name is eleanor. In French, it is pronounced eléanore (eh-LAY-AH-nor). The French variation of the name is eléonore with the o and the acute accent on the second e. That is because it is a French name and therefore a different name to mine.
I am completely against adding extra accents onto names that don’t initially have them because for most counties that genuinely use accents, it changes the way the name is pronounced. It doesn’t make it look pretty and it can make a person feel stupid. I know I’ve been in situations that I have seen a name written down (I work in an international school), pronounced the name how I thought it was pronounced (because it had an accent on it), and then been told by the parent/child that it was pronounced something completely different to how it was written.
Basically, my point is, if you want to use an accent, choose a name that genuinely has the accent in the name and then follow through with actually pronouncing the name how it is meant to be pronounced. I love the name léa. If I were to use it, it would be spelled léa and pronounced (LAY-AH) because it has the accent. I wouldn’t then start calling my child leah (LEE-UH) because it is the English pronunciation of léa. leah is a completely different name to léa. That is what accents do.
(PS: This is not against anyone, I just feel strongly about accents in names and how they are sometimes used to make names look pretty!)
If I were living in Mexico, my oldest’s name would be spelled [name_f]Noemí[/name_f]. Since I can’t put the accent over the i on her US birth certificate, her name is spelled [name_f]Noemi[/name_f]. This baby will have no accent mark on her middle name, even though it should have one (Belén). I didn’t want to use it as a first name because I thought there would be a lot of pronunciation problems without the accent. I can see people pronouncing [name_f]Belen[/name_f] to rhyme with [name_f]Helen[/name_f], instead of [name_f]Belén[/name_f] being pronounced like Beh-LENN.
I’m from [name_f]Canada[/name_f] and some of my sisters and I have accented names! [name_f]My[/name_f] middle is Stéphanie, and my sisters are Mélodie and Kaïla.
While i’d like to keep the theme, I probably won’t because most of the names i like don’t have accents.
But i’m sure it is legal in the USA, plus you listed [name_f]Alaïa[/name_f] from the ACE family and they’re from LA!