WDYT: Iphiginia

I just read a book where the heroine’s name was Iphiginia, and it caught me up every time I came to it because I had SUCH a difficult time pronouncing it. I ended up calling her Iphinnia in my head while I was reading because I just couldn’t wrap my head around this name. And I thought of my fellow berries the whole book and couldn’t wait to see what you all thought of it.

So what do you think of this name? [name_m]How[/name_m] would you pronounce it? Does it roll off your tongue? Am I missing something? (By the way, she was British, so it wasn’t a foreign name.)

As a lover of literature, my first thought was “[name_f]Iphigenie[/name_f] auf [name_m]Tauris[/name_m]” by Goethe ("[name_f]Iphigenia[/name_f] in [name_m]Tauris[/name_m]" in English). As much as I love Goethe, I’m not a fan. It seems a little pretentious, and it’s very hard to pronounce. In [name_m]German[/name_m] I would say “Ee-vee-[name_u]GAY[/name_u]-nee-uh” and in English I think I’d pronounce it “Iffy-[name_m]GEE[/name_m]-nee-ah.” Whew! :slight_smile:

I remember looking this name up years ago but I don’t remember why. I thought it would be ‘if-ih-jenny-a’ but it was pronounced ‘if-ih-jen-NY-a’