Posted: Jan 02, 2014 3:19 pm
Aern Rakesh wrote:Agrippina wrote:Aern Rakesh wrote:Agrippina wrote::lol: Reminds me of the guy named Sean who came to do something in my office and insisted it was pronounced "seen."
One favourite in SA is Siobhan, except they spell it Shavon, Shavonne because they say "people don't know how to say it." Well then moron, if you're playing to other morons, name your child Sue.
Actually there are a lot of boys named Shawn in the US. I think the changing of spelling is inevitable as people move around the globe and as times change. We don't insist that boys named John are called Johan or Johannes...
I can understand people changing a name for language purposes, but to change it because "other people won't spell it correctly" is snobbery, and arrogance. If they Afrikanised Siobhan, although I don't know how they would do it and possibly spelling it "Shavonne" is an attempt at that, I can understand that too. However, the person I'm talking about isn't Afrikaans-speaking, he is more English than I am. Don't take notice of me Aern, I'm just being obsessive and old-fashioned.
Well to be honest, I never knew any Seans, and when I first came over here I always though Sean Bean's name was pronounced Seen Bean!
But you know what really gets my goat, is that people who insist on spelling my name Norah when I've sent them an email and signed it Nora and it has come from a Nora (and oops, I realise I've just given away my secret identity!)
I know what you mean. I have a friend who freaks out every time someone uses the Afrikaans/German/Swedish/Danish pronunciation of her name, even though it's spelt that way. She insists on the English/American pronunciation. But we live in SA and more people speak Afrikaans than English, so she simply uses only her first initial as her name. When I asked her why they didn't spell it the American way if she wanted it pronounced like that, she claimed she was named for a famous Dane. I pointed out that the Danish pronunciation would be the same as the one that the locals use, and we almost came to the end of our friendship. So I just let it go. For some reason, South Africans get extremely emotional about their English heritage.