Thalassa Pronunciation

Writers' Corner
1

I’m writing a book about mermaids, and two of my characters (a girl and her late grandmother) have this beautiful Greek name. It’s absolutely perfect; I love the look, the spelling, and the meaning. The issue is the “th” at the beginning.

Last year, I read a book series where a group of characters were named after different elements. (I promise I’m going somewhere with this!) The main character was named after Thallium, and her nickname was Thalli. Yet, throughout the entire book, I mentally pronounced it “Tally”, with a hard “T”.

So here’s my question; if you read my book, how would you pronounce [name_f]Thalassa[/name_f] in your head? I lean toward “tuh-LASS-uh”, even though it’s not the correct pronunciation. It flows more easily.

Which pronunciation should I put in the character index?

2

I feel like it would be a little weird seeing an author put the incorrect pronunciation in the character index? I would kind of assume that they didn’t really do their research and didn’t know what they were talking about. So personally I’d either not write down pronunciations at all, and leave it to the reader to pronounce them as they wish, or I’d write down the correct pronunciation!

3

Thanks! I probably will leave out the pronunciation, considering that the rest of the names are fairly straightforward.

1 Like
4

Is tuh-LASS-uh not correct? :sweat_smile: That’s how I’d say it!