Have you ever heard a name you love, or just an average name, said in a different accent and you’ve just been devastated at how it sounds?
I heard Hesper in a New [name]York[/name] accent and a [name]Texas[/name] accent just now, while looking up audios for it, and I’m so crushed, it sounds vile. But in my accent I think it sounds so soft and lovely.
Northern English/Wigan, a.k.a the accent of my entire family!
Weird, weird vowel sounds we have. Names like [name]Naomi[/name] are mangled :rolleyes:
American’s always very different because they pronounce all the 'r’s.
In my accent [name]Aubrey[/name] sounds like Aw-berry. I don’t like it anyway so it doesn’t really matter.
I’m not sure if I can peg and accent that really ruins names (apart from my fear of unilingual English-speakers saying [name]Leire[/name]), but I do prefer the ceceo distinction accent in Spanish. [name]Alicia[/name] is a name I do.not.like.at.all. in English, but said in (most of) Spain, my jaw drops and I love it!
Oh, English pronunciation of [name]Claude[/name] (when it’s meant to be in French).
I hate the way Americans or English speakers say Greek names. [name]Ione[/name] becomes eye-oh-nee instead of the proper ee-oh-nee…[name]Ariadne[/name] becomes ah-ree-od-nee or some such way…it’s sad and makes me just want to shake people to learn the real pronunciations.
I feel the same way about people who use Irish/Welsh etc names and refuse to learn the real pronunciation. Like with [name]Siobhan[/name]. Shiv-awn is lovely but I know so many people that will argue until they’re blue in the face that it’s pronounced see-ohb-hahn … no.
American accents ruin some names for me a bit (sorry American [name]Berry[/name]'s!).
[name]Tara[/name] prn [name]Tah[/name]-rah in [name]Britain[/name]/Europe become Teh-reh
Klar-ah becomes [name]Claire[/name]-ah
And the butchering of Welsh names such as [name]Carys[/name],[name]Seren[/name] etc is just awful.
Northern accents in [name]England[/name] are infamous for ruining names too.
[name]Katie[/name] - prn by the rest of the UK is [name]Kay[/name]-tee. In Northern accents it’s Keh-teh.
[name]Bonnie[/name] goes from Bon-nee to Bon-nuh etc
By northern I mean the Yorshire area rather than Newcastle and Liverpool. Though in the [name]North[/name],they’re entirely different!
I agree with Dantea re Greek names being pronounced awfully. I’m not sure if it’s because I’ve grown with semi-bilingual,and that Welsh a wholly phonetic language,but I “get” the pronounciations of names intuitively most of the time.
[name]How[/name] [name]Ariadne[/name] ends up being pronounced [name]Ari[/name]-od-nee is quite beyond me.
I do admit I err away from the strictly correct Greek pronounciation of [name]Hermione[/name] though,going for the Her-my-on-nee pronounciation.
Actually, I’m American and I don’t pronounce those names the way you say Americans do. You can’t really generalize like that unless you’ve heard every American say them. The same goes for the names dantea listed. I pronounce those correctly as well. However, you also can’t blame someone for pronouncing a name wrong if it is from an entirely different language to begin with. Not everyone in the world is going to know how to “correctly” pronounce every name.
@kathrynsarah apologies some American accents. No offence intended.
I cant stand [name]Anita[/name] pronounced uh-neet-uh instead of ah-nit-a.
I prefer saying [name]Tara[/name] as tah-rah and [name]Terra[/name] as ter-ah 
Also, @kathrynsarah – of course people don’t intuitively pronounce names properly, my point is that nowadays, it’s a simple google search to find out how a name is pronounced. A lot of people just don’t care and those are the people I’m mad at. The ones that are saying it wrong and don’t even care how to say it right, so they don’t look.
My own name, [name]Sara[/name]! My extremely southern great g-parents would call me [name]Say[/name]-rah. Ugh! I never said anything out of respect. (they also called my mom [name]Karen[/name], [name]Kay[/name]-ren) in the south most ppl say [name]Serra[/name], but my Rhode Island friend says Sah-rah, which i [name]LOVE[/name]. Fav prn!
@saraalison Sah-rah is how Welsh people say it too! It varies in [name]England[/name] though. Often they pronounce it the same way as [name]Sarah[/name]
@Dantea I do pronounce most,though not all names,intuitively correctly. But as I said that may the benefit of growing up speaking English and semi-speaking Welsh. English is the least phonetic language going,in no other language can one word mean at least three things,never mind have the same word be spelt three different ways! Lol!
But Welsh is very phonetic so a bridge is met between the two generally speaking.
But I agree that the main issues is that so many people don’t actually care how to pronounce names correctly. In the google age there is no excuse.
And to be fair regarding the American and Northern accents I criticised. 1) I’ve actually discussed this re [name]Bonnie[/name] with a Yorkshire located person and they could not see how they were pronouncing it differently to me. 2) this lead me to the conclusion that essentially in our heads we all pronounce names in the same way (bar people who go unique pronounciations) and it is just that our regional accents that render the actual sound as being different.
Also…I never knew [name]Terra[/name] was an actual name,I always thought it was just how Americans in the deep south pronounced [name]Tara[/name]! Learn something new every day!
It’s different when it’s an accent that just sounds the same to the people using it as how you’re saying, like the Yorshire accent.
[name]Terra[/name] is the Latin word for [name]Earth[/name] so it’s more like a word name. I like it though
There are so many French names that I don’t understand why English speakers would consider, I know to some degree they’re easy to say but they completely lose their beauty for me. I’ve given up on [name]Elodie[/name] and I now think it’s like Genevieve which has an either or prn and I like both of those but I still don’t like the way Elodie sounds in English.
Other names I don’t care for are Amelie, Anais, Aurelie, Clementine, Clothilde, Etienne, Leonie, Odette, Remi/Remy, Thierry, but I readily admit this is just a personal thing and it’s fine to use them but as much as I see people on boards say they will be prn correctly when I hear people say them it never seems to come out the same. I’m not sure I would want to name my kid Aurelie only to have everyone think of the word “orally” when they hear it.
However there are also plenty of English names that sound awful (IMO) in French: Jade, Ethan [name]Kevin[/name], Joshua, Madison, Meredith, James (just sounds so nice in English, especially when British people say it) [name]Brenda[/name] Brittany,[name]Ruth[/name], Ethan (a lot of “th” names sound bad to me in French.
@dantea I don’t understand exactly what you mean on your first point. It’s late where I am,I’m tired,apologies if I’m being dull!
Haha no I didn’t make myself clear. Example – If I’m talking to some one from [name]Boston[/name] about the name [name]Sawyer[/name] and he keeps saying saw-yuh and I’m saying “no saw-yer”. The problem there isn’t that he doesn’t know how to say it, it’s that he thinks he’s saying it correctly. His accent makes it sound different to me than it sounds to him.
@Dantea oh I see what you mean! That was what I was getting at with my earlier post,we’re completely on the same page
[name]Imogen[/name]: said by some US accents as [name]Imo[/name]-gene. Ewww
[name]Don[/name]'t worry, I’m not offended…just wanted to share my opinion.
And @dantea: I see what you mean and I think ignorance about the pronunciation has more to do with it than a person’s accent. I have always loved [name]Siobhan[/name], and I will admit, I didn’t know how to pronounce it when I first saw it, but once I found out, I never pronounced it wrong again! 
When my dad was little, the first time he saw the name [name]Penelope[/name] in a book, he thought it was pronounced pen-el-lope (rhymes with hope) haha.