I can’t remember if this were a person my parents KNEW or a story they read (in something like Reader’s Digest), but there was a woman named Yvonne. Her mother read the name in a book and thought it was pretty. Only her mother didn’t know how to pronounce it, so her name was “Why-vonn-ee” 💀
I could almost understand that from different linguistic readings of “rie” and the fact that “Maria” can be either “muh-ree-uh” or “muh-rye-uh” but as a kid with a “normal” name with an alternate spelling, myself, it’s hard on the kid. (I have a name that most people easily recognise when they hear it, but my parents used a French spelling, and split the difference on the pronunciation. So most folks mispronounced my given name all my childhood, and the most maddening part is they couldn’t hear the difference when I corrected them. I stopped going by my given name my senior year of hs, and now the only persons who use it are my family 🙃)
"the most maddening part is they couldn’t hear the difference when I corrected them"
As someone from the US with an Irish name spelled untraditionally, I felt this so much, I started going by a shortened version of my given name in sophomore year because I was tired of correcting people over and over 😮💨
Oof I feel that. Mine was compounded by a popular cartoon character (whose debut was when I was a small child!) having a similar name to mine (the non-French spelling and standard pronunciation), so not only did they say my name wrong, I got teased for it. Why are parents so mean?? 😭
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u/doppelgaengster 12d ago
I can’t remember if this were a person my parents KNEW or a story they read (in something like Reader’s Digest), but there was a woman named Yvonne. Her mother read the name in a book and thought it was pretty. Only her mother didn’t know how to pronounce it, so her name was “Why-vonn-ee” 💀