This is something I’ve been curious about for awhile, and who better to ask than the Berries!
The first time I saw the name [name]Rhys[/name], I immediately thought [name]Rice[/name]. When I later discovered it was actually pronounced [name]Reese[/name], I was quite put off, for two reasons. First, [name]Reese[/name] is very much a female name to me. Second, that pronunciation just doesn’t seem right with the spelling; if anything, it should be pronounced Riss based on English language rules.
As far as I know, I’ve never heard of another person pronouncing it as [name]Rice[/name] - but is this an acceptable alternate for the name? If I were to name a son [name]Rhys[/name], pronounced [name]Rice[/name], do you think he’d run into a lot of pronunciation trouble throughout his life? [name]Do[/name] you even think it works as a name, or is it just too weird with the connection to the grain?
(FYI, I’m not expecting nor plan to conceive in the near future. This is just something that’s been on my mind for awhile!)
[name]Rhys[/name] is a Welsh name so I assume that’s the phonetic spelling in Welsh. I’ve never heard it pronounced any way but [name]Reese[/name]. If you’d like your son’s name pronounced [name]Rice[/name] I think it’s going to cause quite a bit of confusion if you choose to spell it [name]Rhys[/name]. JMO.
I think it depends where you’re from. The pronunciation is definitely supposed to be [name]Reese[/name], and I’ve never heard anyone called [name]Rhys[/name] prn it differently, BUT we have a comedian in NZ called [name]Rhys[/name] [name]Darby[/name] and I’ve been asked a couple of times by people in the US who haven’t encountered the name before if it’s prn [name]Rice[/name]. I guess pronunciation problems depend on whether or not the name’s known in your area. It’s definitely a masculine name though!
[name]Rhys[/name], as previously mentioned, is Welsh and definitively male. The only reason people consider it female is because of [name]Reese[/name] Witherspoon, and that’s not even her birth name (she was born [name]Laura[/name] [name]Jean[/name] [name]Reese[/name], [name]Reese[/name] being her mother’s maiden name). [name]Rhys[/name] has hundreds of years of history behind it, while [name]Reese[/name] is a modern coinage. I don’t like [name]Rhys[/name] pronounced [name]Rice[/name]- to me, it’s a bit like naming a daughter the French [name]Christine[/name] and then pronouncing it “chris-[name]TIN[/name]-ee.” [name]Plenty[/name] of names don’t follow phoenetic rules of English- [name]Michael[/name], pronounced phoenetically, would be something like MICH-ay-el, but instead is [name]MIKE[/name]-ul.
English isn’t really a phonetic language anyway, even if this was an English name, which as others have pointed out it isn’t. I have always heard [name]Rhys[/name] pronounced HREEs, with a very slightly rolled R (very, very slightly, probably unnoticeable to most people), which I don’t associate with [name]Reese[/name] or [name]Reece[/name]. Honestly, in spite of ms witherspoon, I can’t get my head around the use of the latter two on girls. “[name]Rice[/name]” seems beyond strange to me, like pronouncing [name]Isabelle[/name] EYE-so-beel or something.
