How do you convey how to pronounce a character’s name?

JK Rowling had that problem with Hermione, and solved it by having Hermione teach another character how to pronounce her name correctly. I think that's one of the few non-intrusive ways to handle it, too -- have a character say the name phonetically for the benefit of another character.

Yep, character correcting other characters is a solution. There's also having the narrator point it out if you can work it. Although, Hermione is a name from Greek mythology so many European languages have some instinct on how to pronounce it.

Honestly, if you're that worried and the above won't do, I wouldn't bother correcting people. Differences in pronunciation happens a lot and it's not a big deal.

Put an accent (é) or an umlaut (ë) over it. Or change the name to something easy to pronounce. Or don't worry about it; let the reader pronounce the damn thing any way the reader so pleases.

caw

Here's an example from my novel. The name is first mispronounced, then corrected. Some beta-readers approved, but not everyone was in love with the method:

"Well, your auntie goes on and on how you can talk with your fingers, an' by now you know the man my deputy went to get can't hear," Uncle Ben said. "So tell us what you found out about LIE-kester Huntsman, darlin'." His diction ran the gamut from fairly standard English to backwoods bumpkin. D'arcy was unsure whether mangling Huntsman's first name was unintentional or for fun.

She drew a thick file from a pouch on the side of her chair. "I fully expected Huntsman to be a pseudonym, perhaps for his investigation pursuits, but there were three previous LESS-ters . . ."

Is the pronunciation of the "e" important to the story?

I've encountered names in fantasy where I just don't even try. Binabik (Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn) for example - the world was so new when I met him and I'd heard so many other words that my brain just could not read that name - so he was Binny until To Green Angel Tower. For some reason, Qantaqa didn't trip me up.

If it's that important, I'd go with the above advice. If not, I'd let it go.

How I solved the problem of how to pronounce my MC's rather tricky ancient Egyptian name:

[Note: MC is teaching FMC to read. She asks him to show her how to spell his name, whereas he just wants to wrap up the lesson so he can kiss her.]

She shook her head and held out the charcoal to him. “Not until you show me Djehuty.”

With a growl of frustration, he took the charcoal and began to write. “There,” he said, then sounded out each glyph as he pointed to it. “Jeh-hoo-tee."

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I still pronouce it Her-mee-own in my head. I started out with that and it sticks even after I found out how to actually pronounce it. (And frankly, I skip phonetics the same way I skip foreign languages in stories.) Readers will read it however they want despite your best efforts.

Chase said:

"Well, your auntie goes on and on how you can talk with your fingers, an' by now you know the man my deputy went to get can't hear," Uncle Ben said. "So tell us what you found out about LIE-kester Huntsman, darlin'." . . . there were three previous LESS-ters . . ."

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Learn something new every day - though why in hell one would spell Lester like that is beyond me.

shadowwalker said:

though why in hell one would spell Lester like that is beyond me.

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Beyond me, too.

Oh, it can get much worse than "Leicester" in good ole England. Try "Featherstone" as just one example; guess how that's pronounced.

caw

I dunno about Featherstone, but Featherstonhaugh is a doozy.

For me, I usually try to spell made up names as phonetically as possible. I figure we're "translating" the language these characters speak into English anyway, so when I "Romanize" the spellings into our alphabet, why wouldn't I make it as easy on an English-speaking reader as possible?

The exception might be if the language and culture of my fantasy people is strongly influenced by a real-world culture where the standard Romanized spellings aren't at all phoenetic by English standards. There, I'd hope that readers would see the pattern and figure out, hey, these folks have names that look a lot like Welsh ones (where a word pronounced like "Coomree" is spelled Cymru, and double ds are pronounced like a "th" etc). Maybe some sort of short explanation at the beginning or in an appendix might be in order too. I've seen fantasy writers do this re pronunciation.

Another thing to consider is that many relatively common English words and names have different possible pronunciations for the same spellings. Sometimes it's simply regional differences, but sometimes there really are two different names with the same spelling. I discovered that a "Julian" in my class this semester is in fact a woman who pronounces her name "Julianne," and I have three "Ana" this semester, each pronounced differently (and I can't remember which one prefers which pronunciation).

So one thing I ask myself is how much the pronunciation really matters to a reader (since your characters aren't real people who will be irked if someone gets their name wrong). Will it change my readers' enjoyment of the story if they pronounce a character (for example) whose name is supposed to be Anna pronounced like "Ahh na" as "An na" instead, or if they put the accent on the middle syllable instead of the first one with a made-up name like Remulak?

Or you could do the JK Rowling trick. Have another character struggle with a challenging name and have the character correct them, as Hermione did.

I do my best not to use names readers can't pronounce, and I do my best to avoid novels where the writer doesn't do the same. I don't read fiction because I want to stop mid-stry to figure out how to pronounce a bunch of letters that shouldn't be together. It takes very little of this to make me go look for another writer.

Hermione didn't bother me because, to me, it's pronounced just like it's spelled, and it's also pops up in mythology pretty often. But I like knowing how to pronounce names, and without a lesson from another character.

Spell the name phonetically. Hermione is a real name. I pronounced it correctly from the start when reading Harry Potter because it's like Penelope (who pronounces that "penny-loap"?) and I've heard of both names before. For made up names in made up languages, why have silent letters or other peculiarities? These exist in English because of the history of the English language and the name's etymology. Names transliterated from other languages are transliterated phonetically, using the occasional odd letter or symbol to represent sounds not in English. For example the kh in Khalid, the q in Qasim, the ! in !kung San. I would avoid these altogether in fantasy languages because no-one is going to know how to pronounce them - just use sounds from English and spell the name phonetically.

If the name is from another language that uses that Latin alphabet but different phonics rules, such as a French, Welsh or Irish name, or has a standard transliteration into English that doesn't quite match the phonics of English, use that. For made up names, use phonics. People should know how to pronounce common English names like Leicester and Worcester. Although I do remember the time some American tourists stopped me on the tube to ask me how to get to Lie-ses-ter square.

I have noticed that in the Jeeves and Wooster books the writer used a phonetic spelling of Worcester. Maybe because of the potential for people to pronounce it "wor-ses-ter".

neandermagnon said:

Spell the name phonetically. Hermione is a real name. I pronounced it correctly from the start when reading Harry Potter because it's like Penelope (who pronounces that "penny-loap"?) and I've heard of both names before. For made up names in made up languages, why have silent letters or other peculiarities?

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Yes, it is, but many of us American types never encountered it before reading the Harry Potter books, because it really wasn't common over here when many of us were growing up (in fiction or in actual names for women). I wasn't sure how to pronounce it until I read the fourth book, but it really wasn't a big deal.

Penelope is an interesting one too. It had died out as a name you actually encountered by the time I was a kid (maybe some older folks had it, but when I was a kid, we rarely knew the first names of grownups). I did hear the name in one context, though, because there was a character named "Penelope Pitstop" on a cartoon I watched.

But I never saw the name spelled on that show, just heard it. On the rare occasions I encountered the name "Penelope" in books, I always thought of it as "penny lope" in my mind. There was an "aha" moment at some point, when I realized that this was in fact the correct spelling for the name "penelopie" in the cartoon I'd watched years before.

Kind of like when I realized that the "horse de oovers" in books were the same thing as the snacks called "ordervs" that people talked about on TV sometimes, or when I realized that the word "voila" people sometimes said in books (and I always inverted in my head to pronounce the same way as the instrument called a viola) was in fact the spelling of the word "vwa laaa" that my mom sometimes said when she did found something I was missing.

The written and heard connection is a strange thing, and I suspect human brains are all over the place in how they process this kind of information.

There's no shame in having read more words than you're heard pronounced.

I just occurred to me that I have heard of more actors named Hermione (Gingold, Baddeley, Norris) than I have of actors named Penelope (Keith, Cruz).

Roxxsmom said:

Yes, it is, but many of us American types never encountered it before reading the Harry Potter books, because it really wasn't common over here when many of us were growing up (in fiction or in actual names for women). I wasn't sure how to pronounce it until I read the fourth book, but it really wasn't a big deal.

Penelope is an interesting one too. It had died out as a name you actually encountered by the time I was a kid (maybe some older folks had it, but when I was a kid, we rarely knew the first names of grownups). I did hear the name in one context, though, because there was a character named "Penelope Pitstop" on a cartoon I watched.

But I never saw the name spelled on that show, just heard it. On the rare occasions I encountered the name "Penelope" in books, I always thought of it as "penny lope" in my mind. There was an "aha" moment at some point, when I realized that this was in fact the correct spelling for the name "penelopie" in the cartoon I'd watched years before.

Kind of like when I realized that the "horse de oovers" in books were the same thing as the snacks called "ordervs" that people talked about on TV sometimes, or when I realized that the word "voila" people sometimes said in books (and I always inverted in my head to pronounce the same way as the instrument called a viola) was in fact the spelling of the word "vwa laaa" that my mom sometimes said when she did found something I was missing.

The written and heard connection is a strange thing, and I suspect human brains are all over the place in how they process this kind of information.

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It's familiarity. There are different name trends. Penelope is a fairly common name over here. My 5 yr old went to a birthday party a couple of days ago, the little girl whose party it was is called Penelope. I can think of quite a few other Penelopes I've known over the years. Hermione was less common, but not that unheard of - now gaining in popularity due to Harry Potter, but you'd come across the occasional Hermione before then even so. Plus, my generation at least (not sure so much with younger generations) were taught Greek myths at school, so you have Persephone and others as well that follow similar phonics.

Also, almost everyone learns French over here - them being our Arch Rivals (aka neighbours who occupied us for 1000 years with the occasional small spat (aka 100 years war and others) between the two countries - but that's all fine now as long as they don't beat us at football (soccer) or rugby). So phrases like hors d'oeuvres, voila, je ne sais quoi etc are commonly known, as are common French names like Pierre and Francois. We all remember them as cheesy characters from French textbooks.

It works the other way around though. For example I remember as a teenager going to a Tex-Mex restaurant and thinking "Buffalo wings? What the hell? Buffalos don't have wings!" (hadn't heard of the city called Buffalo). There are probably quite a few other things I've been ignorant of that are common knowledge in the USA.

KiwiChick said:

Have you ever dealt with a similar problem? Any good solutions?

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One way to do it is have another character mispronounce it, and the original character can correct that. You're probably not going to work that into the first scene, not credibly, anyway, but as long as it comes fairly soon in the book, that shouldn't be a problem.

I deal with the same issue, so I know how it is. Mostly, I feel it doesn't matter as long as the name is easily pronounced in some fashion, even if it's not the way I hear it in my head. But I did once resort to a version of the advice I just gave you, only in my case, the character simply noted in her own thoughts that a foreigner pronounced her name with the emphasis on the first syllable instead of, more properly, the second.

Chase said:

Here's an example from my novel. The name is first mispronounced, then corrected. Some beta-readers approved, but not everyone was in love with the method:

"Well, your auntie goes on and on how you can talk with your fingers, an' by now you know the man my deputy went to get can't hear," Uncle Ben said. "So tell us what you found out about LIE-kester Huntsman, darlin'." His diction ran the gamut from fairly standard English to backwoods bumpkin. D'arcy was unsure whether mangling Huntsman's first name was unintentional or for fun.

She drew a thick file from a pouch on the side of her chair. "I fully expected Huntsman to be a pseudonym, perhaps for his investigation pursuits, but there were three previous LESS-ters . . ."

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Looks fine to me!

shadowwalker said:

Learn something new every day - though why in hell one would spell Lester like that is beyond me.

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I think the name in question is spelled Leicester. (Am I right, Chase?) Though how some backwoods guy ended up with that as a name is beyond me.

blacbird said:

Oh, it can get much worse than "Leicester" in good ole England. Try "Featherstone" as just one example; guess how that's pronounced.

caw

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Oh dear, it's not feather stone?

I once saw a You Tube video where a fantasy author (can't remember which one now) who pronounced the name of one of his characters differently in different parts of the interview. When the interviewer pointed this out, the author laughed and said that should answer the questions of those fans who were always obsessing over how to pronounce the names in his world.

neandermagnon said:

Also, almost everyone learns French over here - them being our Arch Rivals (aka neighbours who occupied us for 1000 years with the occasional small spat (aka 100 years war and others) between the two countries - but that's all fine now as long as they don't beat us at football (soccer) or rugby). So phrases like hors d'oeuvres, voila, je ne sais quoi etc are commonly known, as are common French names like Pierre and Francois. We all remember them as cheesy characters from French textbooks.

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I think Francois may have been another name I mispronounced in my head the first time I encountered it in a book. Some US kids take French, but a good number take German or Spanish (or other languages if they're available) instead. I took Spanish in school, and so many place names and people out west have Spanish names that I'm better with those pronunciations. I'm better with French than I used to be, though. A large number of the English words whose spelling I get brain farts with (like bureau) come from French, however.

It works the other way around though. For example I remember as a teenager going to a Tex-Mex restaurant and thinking "Buffalo wings? What the hell? Buffalos don't have wings!" (hadn't heard of the city called Buffalo). There are probably quite a few other things I've been ignorant of that are common knowledge in the USA.

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HA! We get them teeny little wings from buffalo FLIES.

Seriously though, I don't remember when I first encountered that food item--sometime in the 90s maybe--but I didn't immediately associate them with the city either. I only learned the origin of the name when I lived in Northern NY for a couple years.

neandermagnon said:

Spell the name phonetically. Hermione is a real name. I pronounced it correctly from the start when reading Harry Potter because it's like Penelope (who pronounces that "penny-loap"?)

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Ummm, I did, when I was a kid and had never heard the name spoken before. And I also pronounced Hermione as HER-me-own when I first read HP. And that was as an adult. I don't think I'd ever encountered it before, not that I could remember. I was relieved to discover the correct pronunciation, which is much more musical.

neandermagnon said:

It works the other way around though. For example I remember as a teenager going to a Tex-Mex restaurant and thinking "Buffalo wings? What the hell? Buffalos don't have wings!" (hadn't heard of the city called Buffalo). There are probably quite a few other things I've been ignorant of that are common knowledge in the USA.

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Not sure how common it is. This is new information to me.