Ten Things About How to Pronounce Those Odd Names & Words I Write
Charmian: the h is silent, and the C is hard, just as it is in Chemistry, so it's KAR-mee-ahn.
Cherijo: The #1 most mispronounced name from my books; usually read out loud like the cereal (Cheerios.) The correct way to say it is CHAIR-ee-joe.
Cyprien: I've had actual arguments with people over the various ways to say this one. I pronounce it SEE-prahn.
Darkyn: I cooked up this one from a medieval reference to "dark kin" in a history book, which is probably why I pronounce it DAR-kin.
Jamys: Made this one up myself, too, although there may be an ancient equivalent out there somewhere. Most people say it as JAM-miss or JAY-miss. I pronounce it as Jshah-ME.
Kao: I coined it from the letters K and O, which is also how it's pronounced: KAY-oh.
Kyara: I borrowed this from a baby name book; it's pronounced Key-ARE-ah.
Thierry: Another silent h here -- it's pronounced Tee-AIR-ee.
Xonea: For some reason everyone thinks it's Zoh-NEE-ah; I pronounce it with the short o: Zuh-NEE-ah
and finally, about my own headache:
Viehl: It's not pronounced VALE or VILE, and it's actually two syllables, like Kal-El (you did not know I belonged to the House of El, did you?) So to be completely accurate it's pronounced VEE-el, but VEEL is perfectly acceptable.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Europeans know how to pronounce Thierry because mmmmm Thierry Henry - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wqkykj1tTpE
ReplyDeleteYou Europeans know how to do everything -- with style, too. :)
DeleteYou mean I've been pronouncing Cyprien incorrectly in my head all this time? Drat! (That's pronounced Dee-rat.)
ReplyDeleteThat's okay. We call you Dee-ARR-lee-knee.
DeleteAh! So Kao is K-O (Knock Out)? That seems appropriate. Of all the male characters in StarDoc, Kao was the one who make me weak at the knees. ;-)
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to hear I've been pronouncing it wrong, because the way I pronounced it sounded very similar to the Portuguese "cao", which means "dog". That did not sit well with me. K-O is much better. :-)
Kao has kind of a dual history; it came from knockout & the first and last letters of actor Kevin Sorbo's name. When I was younger I had a thing for Kevin, but then, who didn't?
Deletehttp://www.verwandt.de/karten/absolut/viehl.html
ReplyDeleteJust for fun and giggles...was curious where your ancestorst might have lived...and tataaaa...Viehl is a common name where I come from!
In Switzerland it's not very common http://www.verwandt.ch/karten/absolut/viehl.html
and Austria looks like this...http://www.verwandt.ch/karten/absolut/viehl.html
We have lots of cousins in Germany, Susanne, so I know that's where the Viehl side of the family originated (we also have documents from when the original two great-grandparents immigrated to the U.S. that name the villages in Germany where they were born.) Last time I checked there were still less that 100 Viehls over here, though. :)
DeleteWell isn't it interesting to see the differences. For me Jamys was the most difficult to pronounce, so I just made up something that sounded good to me and used that. Nice to know how Viehl should be pronounced, but as my local librarians use "Vale", I'll have to stick to that with them.
ReplyDeleteI make up ways to pronounce names in books that I've never heard, Fran -- I think we all do -- but I often improv on the author's name as well. I went around for years saying Annie Proulx's surname as PROWL (figuring I was safe dropping the last letter) before someone corrected me and said it was pronounced like PROOF without the F. :)
ReplyDelete