For example, an English person called Bob might introduce themselves as “Bob”, whereas an American person called Bob might introduce themselves as “Bahb”. (Sorry, don’t know the phonetic alphabet but hopefully you get my gist)
Should you pronounce those two people’s names the same, with your own natural accent, or should you copy how the person says their own name?
Edit: I specifically picked a generic English name with different pronunciation across different accents. I know my wording wasn’t great, sorry! Hopefully the edit is a bit clearer.
Context and other languages
When pronouncing a name from a different language, I firmly believe you should copy the pronunciation of the owner of that name, and not Anglicise the name unless asked to. I say this as a speaker of a language that English people regularly mispronounce and even insist to me that they know the correct pronunciation of my language.
Yes because accents are funny
You might have a fair point but who the fuck in the US pronounces it “Bahb”.
Lmao I don’t know why I find it funny.
Just said “hi bahb” to my grandfather bob and he told me he was going to disinherit me. But I digress I don’t know the phonetic symbols either.
The ahh sound is pretty common in New England accents I’m pretty certain. Goin to the ha-bah this sum-ah (harbor this summer).
Many of us don’t pronounce Rs completely, and vowel sound have a slight adjustment. Bob, and Bahb, is such a small change, but saying Bob in Maine or Boston, I totally hear it, Bahb. Yeah, I totally understand what OP means.
Not if you’re from Bahstahn.
For some names/languages, it does kinda help me pronounce them correctly. Japanese and French names are some examples I can think of where it could be useful.
I try to say it exactly like they say it.
I had a coworker named Mahmoud, and all my native-English-speaking coworkers heavily anglicized the pronunciation, removing the throat-clearing sound of the h, and changing the first vowel to like the a in “math” rather than like the a in “mall”. Whenever I spoke to him, I tried to copy his inflection as best I could, and and he seemed delighted, but I never clarified if it was about my pronunciation.
My birthname is anglicized French. The English form is well-known. I hate it. But even the quebecois kinda butcher it. So I cope. No one’s gonna get it right, so why stress?
It’s a French name pronounced the English way?
I’m guessing it’s probably something along the lines of Aimee/Amy.
Yep. It’s like Michel/Michelle/Michael, if the anglo form derived not from the Hebrew but the French form; and badly: Meekul (which isn’t bad by itself, but is just uncanny-valley weird).
To make matters worse, the discordant form is popular in some famous boomer/X vocalists; so I commiserate with Sade, a local clerk, and we get to eye-roll in unison about it.
Bah. It’s not peak-discordant (imagine a ‘Moy-KELLE’ that isn’t a Michaela), so it’s no significant source of stress; just a footnote . But enough about boring me.
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Asking me to repeat my name 5 times is annoying.
💀 Bruh my teachers did this. I hated it. Like c’mon, there’s no way they’re gonna be able to pronounce a tonal-language correctly.
American Bobs are Bohbs not Bahbs that’s Babs
depends on name, but probably not, don’t mock people’s voices
In those situations, I repeat it back to them and ask if I got it right. In my experience, people with accents tend to be amused when people earnestly struggle to pronounce their names.
Accent is not pronunciation, I try to get as close as possible as the originally intended pronunciation the person cast of their name, not mimic the stereotypical changes in the common sounds the person makes on the transcribed text of their name… I believe there is a difference
This. Forget about accent. Try to pronounce their name as close as you can to how they said it themselves. That’s what matters.
No. Even if it’s foreign, I don’t put on an accent. I Anglicise the name.
I have also a sinicised version of my name for the Chinese. I even introduce myself with it. I don’t expect any foreigner to use my English name.
Just pronounce it as it’s supposed to be pronounced according to it’s written form
I mean I’ll.try but I am not confident in myself here
As a classroom teacher for students who are >80% immigrants from non-anglophone countries, I can actually speak with some authority on the subject. I have many students who have traditional names in other languages, as well as students whose parents 100% just made up something they thought sounded nice. I am one of the few teachers who emphasises correctly pronouncing students’ names. If they put stress on the second syllable, I put stress on the second syllable. If they have a non-english phoneme, you bet I’m learning how to do the clicks in Xhosa, or the “ng” in Vietnamese or Maori. I work very hard to make sure I’m pronouncing their names exactly how they do.
I have had three students in the last month alone remark on how I am the only teacher they’ve ever had who pronounced their name “right”. I have a student named Djibril who had extremely poor relationships with most of the teachers in the building, but who always does my work, and he straight up told me last year that it was because I am the only person in the entire school who actually pronounces his name correctly. Everyone else just calls him “juh-BRILL”, when he says it should be pronounced closer to “JEE-breel” (with a lilted r).
Making sure you pronounce someone’s name how they pronounce their name can be extremely important to social relationships, and having an anglicised name attached to them against their will is often mentioned among memoirs of immigrants as one of the first and most alienating things to happen to them when they enter an anglophone country. It’s not about expecting others to cater to your weird name. It’s about people having a basic modicum of respect for the humanity of non-dominant cultures. In america, at least, this respect has never been a thing. From Ellis island literally changing people’s names because they thought they would be hard for “real” Americans to pronounce, to interning anyone with a japanese name regardless of how long their family was in the US, to the new fascist roundups of anyone with a name that sounds plausibly nonwhite.
So, even with different “accents”, I’d say that pronouncing it exactly how they say it can be important. If someone in Germany went to the trouble of pronouncing the ‘w’ in my name with an american “w”, I’d appreciate it, at the least, but it would probably also make me remember them fondly every time someone else pronounced it incorrectly accented.
Thanks a lot for the in-depth answer :)
I don’t do the accent with names. It reminds me of when people say croissant with a French accent or “Mehico” instead of Mexico - I get those are the pronunciations if you’re speaking French or Spanish, but IMO the rest of the sentence is English so just use the English accent / pronunciation.
“So we are going to take our chicken and add a big pinch of MoOoOtZAdeLL” - Giada DeLaurentis
