mispronouncing charcters name

Torgo said:

There are degrees of this. I find names like Qznorg'pthlrggg!xd very annoying.

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Alien characters in my first book (unpublished) had names like k'Tir, d'Ren, and t'Gellin. Worse, each prefix (k', d', t') represented a different click corresponding to a human tongue click where the tongue starts on different parts of the roof of the mouth. (If you try it, you'll hear the difference.) I was pretty proud of it until I realized how difficult it would be to read out loud, say at an author's reading.

Roger J Carlson said:

Alien characters in my first book (unpublished) had names like k'Tir, d'Ren, and t'Gellin. Worse, each prefix (k', d', t') represented a different click corresponding to a human tongue click where the tongue starts on different parts of the roof of the mouth. (If you try it, you'll hear the difference.) I was pretty proud of it until I realized how difficult it would be to read out loud, say at an author's reading.

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What did it for me was, I edited some audiobooks. So I sat there in the studio while the reader struggled with stuff like that. Another thing was that one author (a spy thriller novelist) had a tic where characters would never have full-blown accents - it'd always be "a faint Russian accent" or "the merest hint of Turkish" or "the lingering ghost of a Croat inflection". It drove the actor bananas.

It's unpronounceable names, basically, that I don't get on with. It strikes me that there are a lot of characters in fiction where I am not 100% sure what the correct pronunciation is. Is Bertie "Worcester" or "Whewster"? Is it Stephen "Matt-you're-in" or "Mate-u-rin" or what? It doesn't seem to matter much, as long as I can consistently hear the word inside my own head. If I'm stumbling over clicks and weird phonemes, on the other hand, I get irate.

keepcalmandwriteon said:

Good advice everyone. My name really has no benefit to the plot, and I could change it. I guess I am just selfishly attached to the name since I have been using it for a while now.

And the name is Stievenous (sty-va-nis)

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Don't you love pronunciation issues. I would pronounce that name Stee -ven-us.

Now try pronouncing this, Anaras. Just kidding, but you can if you want.

keepcalmandwriteon said:

Good advice everyone. My name really has no benefit to the plot, and I could change it. I guess I am just selfishly attached to the name since I have been using it for a while now.

And the name is Stievenous (sty-va-nis)

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I read it correctly. Maybe it's not as big of a problem as you think.

Torgo said:

It strikes me that there are a lot of characters in fiction where I am not 100% sure what the correct pronunciation is. Is Bertie "Worcester" or "Whewster"? Is it Stephen "Matt-you're-in" or "Mate-u-rin" or what?

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That's the sort of thing that drives me crazy. If a book has characters with completely unpronounceable names, it goes back on the shelf. But those with characters whose names could be pronounced in a variety of ways drive me up a wall. No matter how I decide it should be pronounced, every time I read it I wonder if I'm right, then try it the other way, and then get irritated. I can't just skim over the name, recognizing it visually, but not mentally pronouncing it. I end up having a little argument with myself every time I come across it and I get yanked out of the story.

Cyia said:

Honoria, (On-nor-EE-uh) ...(on-or-REE-uh)..

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I don't see the difference, really.

I have always known that name to be pronounced on-NOR-ee-uh. Emphasis on the second syllable, not the third, so that's how I would say it if I encountered it.

amergina said:

The MCs of my paranormal romance are Silas and Rhys. Not terribly hard to pronounce, except that I seem to pronounce those names differently than many other people: Sil-as and Reese as opposed to S-eye-lus and Rise.

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Rhys is pronounced Reese. And Silas is SIGH-lus.

Roger J Carlson said:

Well, if there's a reason for the character to have a difficult-to-pronounce name, then go to it. But let me ask this: Is it really necessary? What purpose is being served by using that name? Will the name throw readers out of the story?

If the answers are 'no', 'I don't know', and 'maybe', then you might consider changing the name.

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this was my very first thought

my second was "does the reader need to know how to pronounce it?" granted in HP they did get around to explaining how Hermione was pronounced....in book 5, but I think that was because people kept asking and over time she decided to "fix it".....the first four books did quite well in the vacuum of pronounciation knowledge as people did their relative best and moved on.

Maybe I just read so much HF that this doesn't bother me, but I don't understand the hubbub over names pronunciation. I find the little asides of dialogue to clarify kind of distracting and obnoxious, to be honest. It doesn't matter if a reader mispronounces your character's name as they are reading, does it?

In HF sometimes, you see guides to pronunciation in the beginning of the book. For example, I feel like Holland gave a quick note about how to pronounce Laeghaire at the beginning of The Fire Drake, but honestly I just butchered his name in my head every time I saw it instead of remembering, Oh right it's Lear.

So, OP, if you like the name and it's only one name in your manuscript (like, all of your names aren't wild to pronounce), keep it!

One of my fondest memories of my early SF/F convention attending was a discussion about how to pronounce two names from the Pern series: Mnementh (F'lar's bronze dragon) and Menolly. This went from the original three people to a group of about twenty, all passionate for their own interpretations. It got fairly heated before a Dorsai broke it up.

When I finally heard Anne McCaffrey say the names, they were totally different from anything I'd thought or heard others say.

My take from that has been: It doesn't matter how names are pronounced as long as I'm passionate about the characters and what's happening. As long as I'm not confused who is who, all is good. Thus, I try to make my names recognizable on the page and not too intimidating to pronounce. As I'm a complete wuss at trying to pronounce words I'm not familiar with, I make myself happy.

I'm also one of those people who will nickname characters whose names I can't say off the top of my head, but since no author (outside of betas) will ever know, I don't see the harm.

I remember one of my husband's Russian students mentioning that nobody British could pronounce his name and he was resigned to them getting it wrong. His name was Boris. Mind you, over time I did learn how to pronounce Ivan, Yulia, Sergei, and a few others.

1) I tend to reduce hard to read/pronounce names on a page to a recognizable word pattern, i.e. "Xanth-ggkk'thithianess" = "Xan". I don't even process the rest of it while reading, the extra characters are thrown out and not stored. I'm sure most people do this.

2) It can actually add humor or depth to a character who has a hard to pronounce name if he is constantly correcting new people. This depends entirely on the tone of your story though. At the very least it's a tiny little nod to your reader that they aren't alone.

3) Slight Tangent. I get more annoyed at authors who obviously scoured baby names for "the perfect name to fit the character's personality." This most often ends up being something New Age-y, or Gaelic. Most of the time in real life some one's name has no bearing on their personality. Sometimes John is just John and not "Blessed of God".

keepcalmandwriteon said:

Good advice everyone. My name really has no benefit to the plot, and I could change it. I guess I am just selfishly attached to the name since I have been using it for a while now.

And the name is Stievenous (sty-va-nis)

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No problem here, I don't read aloud, all I need is a reasonable visual that doesn't make me stumble over it, or remember some odd pronunciation. When I read your book, your character will always be 'Steve' to me. The 'nous' is silent.

Buffysquirrel said:

I remember one of my husband's Russian students mentioning that nobody British could pronounce his name and he was resigned to them getting it wrong. His name was Boris. Mind you, over time I did learn how to pronounce Ivan, Yulia, Sergei, and a few others.

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I was going to say 'I suppose we just pronounce Boris like Maurice' and then realised that just opens another can of worms.

I saw Terry Brooks speak at a conference once. It turns out he pronounces Shannara as "SHAN-a-rah".

Meanwhile, the rest of the world seems to pronounce it "shan-AR-ah".

He said he does not have a problem with this, and that he thinks it's good to leave the reader some space to "own" the story that blooms in their mind. The little differences between one person's interpretation and another person's are often the things that make the story matter, emotionally, to that reader.

Torgo said:

I was going to say 'I suppose we just pronounce Boris like Maurice' and then realised that just opens another can of worms.

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Lol, yeah, we do. But Russians don't. Although then again I have never *asked* a Russian to pronounce Maurice....

Now I'm wondering how *you* pronounce Maurice. Because in my world, it doesn't sound the least bit like Boris...

I've heard Brits say 'Maurice' like 'Morris." In fact, wasn't that one of the Bee Gees? Totally confused me the first time I heard that.

Sunflowerrei said:

I've heard Brits say 'Maurice' like 'Morris." In fact, wasn't that one of the Bee Gees? Totally confused me the first time I heard that.

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Yep. You and the Steve Miller Band say "Mow-reece", I guess -- in the French manner (which is probably the right way statistically.)

DeleyanLee said:

When I finally heard Anne McCaffrey say the names, they were totally different from anything I'd thought or heard others say.

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Do you happen to remember how she pronounced them?

My MC grew up speaking French, so she named her horse Feu, which is French for fire. I have her explain the pronunciation early on in a conversation with her soon to be father-in-law, who only speaks English.

BethS said:

I don't see the difference, really.

I have always known that name to be pronounced on-NOR-ee-uh. Emphasis on the second syllable, not the third, so that's how I would say it if I encountered it.

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One is the feminine for Honor. The other rhymes with gonorrhea.

amergina said:

Silas is Sigh-lus only if you're English.

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No it's not. I've never heard it said another way.