3 ms·

Giving your kid a name that cannot be pronounced in many other cultures is a great reminder to these cultures that there's something else in the world than "ins

Giving your kid a name that cannot be pronounced in many other cultures is a great reminder to these cultures that there's something else in the world than "insert culture which has trouble pronouncing that name". I've got a family with "all the colors" (my daughter's nieces/nephews are white, black and asian) and yet we picked a very french name, very hard to pronounce for native english speakers and native japanese speakers (we've got japanese family). And it's a conversation starter, for example: "It's easy: the sound 'ance' (part of my kid's name) is exactly the same as how french people pronounce the 'ance' in 'France'". People are curious. And they try to say it right. And they succeed very quickly. New school this year: two months in several teachers and kids can already pronounce the name correctly.

layer8 3y ago
In my experience, the name just gets converted to whatever is the closest equivalent in the target language. Or gets horribly mangled if the two languages are different in phonetics and syllable repertoire, which they usually are.
- Spivak 3y ago
  Yep which is why it's the smart play to make the spelling in the target language just whatever will make a speaker of said target language say it right. I've always considered my name to be the sound, the spelling is just an implementation detail.
  - layer8 3y ago
    > make the spelling in the target language just whatever will make a speaker of said target language say it right. That’s often not possible, due to the differences in the phonetic repertoire of the respective languages.
cycomanic 3y ago
I can tell you that this is not always the case. I have a relatively old (and uncommon) German name and have many friends from English speaking countries who can't pronounce my name correctly even after knowing my for many years (it contains the German "ch" sound which most English speakers and several other languages struggle with). I can't count the number of pronunciations I have heard and I have largely given up except for the most extreme mispronouncations. It's fascinating what people make up when seeing an unfamiliar spelling, often it does not even resemble the straight-forward English pronunciations, which is straight forward although not really correct. I only encountered this as an adult and I'm not easily bothered, but I can imagine a kid or teenager feeling quite different about their name being a conversation starter after years of the same.
deleted 3y ago
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layer8 3y ago

In my experience, the name just gets converted to whatever is the closest equivalent in the target language. Or gets horribly mangled if the two languages are different in phonetics and syllable repertoire, which they usually are.

Spivak 3y ago
Yep which is why it's the smart play to make the spelling in the target language just whatever will make a speaker of said target language say it right. I've always considered my name to be the sound, the spelling is just an implementation detail.
- layer8 3y ago
  > make the spelling in the target language just whatever will make a speaker of said target language say it right. That’s often not possible, due to the differences in the phonetic repertoire of the respective languages.

cycomanic 3y ago

I can tell you that this is not always the case. I have a relatively old (and uncommon) German name and have many friends from English speaking countries who can't pronounce my name correctly even after knowing my for many years (it contains the German "ch" sound which most English speakers and several other languages struggle with). I can't count the number of pronunciations I have heard and I have largely given up except for the most extreme mispronouncations. It's fascinating what people make up when seeing an unfamiliar spelling, often it does not even resemble the straight-forward English pronunciations, which is straight forward although not really correct. I only encountered this as an adult and I'm not easily bothered, but I can imagine a kid or teenager feeling quite different about their name being a conversation starter after years of the same.

deleted 3y ago

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