I started a summer school job this week, and I had a few children with names that were very difficult to pronounce.
Ohagi
Joalie
Evenaly
How would you pronounce them. Given, Ohagi I'm sure is a cultural name as he is African, the poor boy was so upset that EVERYONE was pronouncing his name wrong, I had him last period, and he actually banged the desk when I mispronounced his name. Needless to say, I had him say it for me again, and I've made a point to say it correctly everytime, I've even made sure to share the pronounciation with his other teachers.
BTW they're pronounced:
Ohagi - Oh-ah-gee
Joalie- Jo-wally
Evenaly- Even-ellie



Re: hard to pronounce names
Poor Ohagi...does he have a nickname people can call him? How hard to go through life like that.
I would call Joalie-Joe-Allie..and Evenaly- evenly...yikes...
as if its not hard enough growing up.
I would pronounce this name as "Jo-lee" "jolie"
People mispronounce my full name (Kristine) all the time - if they just took a moment to read they would get it, there is an E at the end for a reason - pisses me off.
Anyway: I would never get the pronunciation right of those names after reading the correct way either. I read it as it is spelled.
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Poor kids! My last name was butchered all through school, and it got to the point where I demanded to just be Nicole B because I was so tired of hearing about it.
I definitely plan on having a normal named child.
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2007-Sept 2008: TTC the old fashioned way
Sept 2008 - Jan 2009: Clomid 100mg
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Feb 2010: Start TTC again, the old fashioned way
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Spelling and pronounciation of Ohagi make sense evne in English. I'm not sure about the others. It doesn't matter what you name is though, people will find a way to screw it up if they don't care to try.
My name is Nicole, sometimes I go by Nicki. How much more "common" or "normal" can it get? Yet people constantly mess it up - a teacher used to love to call me Nichola and people mess up the spelling even replying to emails where it is clearly already spelled out! Its just laziness more than anything else.
There are way more people on my team at work from other countries (Ukraine, India, China) than from U.S. and as long as they give me a couple of tries to practice, I can get their names just fine.
What a tragedy to not be able to find "cute little things with their name on it"!
Unique names are memorable. There is no need to feel sorry for people with names you don't approve of. Feel sorry for people who are judging and do not possess the skills to learn new words and names.