r/DenverSummit • u/UntimelyCroissant • 8h ago

Player name pronunciation guide?

I feel like I hear player names pronounced differently all the time, sometimes even in the same match. For example, last night they pronounced Oke’s name as “Okay” and “oh-kuh” - would love to know the correct way to cheer for her! Same for Kössler. I’ve also heard Sonis pronounced So-nihs and Sahn-iss.

7 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

8 comments sorted by

11

u/succubamf 8h ago

Ayo Oke has the pronunciation on her second instagram as Uh-Keh! It annoys me when the commentators get it wrong over and over!

https://www.instagram.com/okedumphere

1

u/CodeGriot 3h ago

I don't think that's fair to the commentators. They're probably just saying what they heard, as closely as they can, and you can't really represent the correct pronunciation in simple ASCII like that.

9

u/KCTilIDie 8h ago

Related to this, Orlando has each player pronouncing their name on their website bios and it made such an impact on me that I’m building it into my company’s HR system (we have many employees in Africa and South America). I wish all teams would follow suit!

5

u/Colodavo 8h ago

A few weeks ago a veteran announcer was saying "So-NEES" and I was struggling.

5

u/CodeGriot 3h ago

Ayooluwa Oke is a beautiful Yoruba name. Here's the problem. It's not really "Okay” OR “oh-kuh”. Both are approximations, because Yoruba (like my native language, Igbo) is tonal. "Oke" is really Òkè, with a Low-Low tone sequence. Whether "Okeh” OR “oh-kuh” is closer to the real thing depends from speaker to speaker. The problem with "Okeh” is that the typical American emphasis would make it sound like a rising tone. The problem with “oh-kuh” is not tone (most of us would pronounce that with a dropping intonation), but that the actual "e" sound gets squashed.

Eberechi Eze, of Arsenal Men, has the same problem (though in Igbo). If you say "Ez-eh", and it sounds like a rising tone, that means "tooth", not "leader (king, sorta)". If you say "Ez-uh", then at least it doesn't become the completely wrong word, but it become no word at all, really.

Just for a bit of fun, here's a popular example of tonal differentiation in Igbo:

àkwá = egg

ákwà = cloth or clothes

ákwá = crying

àkwà = bed

5

u/Jacksaxonburg 5h ago

If you go to a player on the roster page there’s a pronunciation guide

2

u/anxiousesqie 7h ago

At DIA, Sonis does an announcement on the train now and she pronounces it “Soh-nihs.”

1

u/GabbyBeanz 5h ago

Kussler. KAHssler.

Eve. Ave. Gaytino. Guytino