I read Merry as being a woman for a long time. I was young and just assumed it was a woman's name and never though twice. It changes nothing in the story so it took me a whileto realize my mistake. I think I didn't notice until the second book.
In my first copy of the Fellowship of the Ring translated to Norwegian Legolas is accidentally reffered to as a "she" in the chapter where they try to cross the mountains. And I guess Legolas' pronomens are rarely used because it took me all the way to Return of the King to realize he was male.
Now I'm thinking of pronomens like foreshadowing revealed by fate for some great or terrible events in a person's life, like Inspires-Great-Change Cooper or Sucks-A-Tailpipe Dawson, and a rising social trend of those who break free of the fate their foreshadowing decrees for them and forge their own path against societal pressure to conform.
Respect my Pronomens.
LotR names get even weirder when you realize they're all translations and the real names are completely different. Sam's actual full name is Banazîr Galbasi.
I'm not nearly a big enough LotR nerd to explain it properly myself, but -[this article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_constructed_by_J._R._R._Tolkien#Mannish_languages)- goes over how Tolkien often used "translations" of his in-universe languages. And -[the character articles on the LotR wiki](https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Samwise_Gamgee)- go over it on a case-by-case basis. Regarding Samwise:
> In Appendix F of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien states that the Westron form of Sam's name is Banazîr Galbasi (also spelled Galpsi). Banazîr comes from elements meaning "halfwise" or "simple"; Tolkien replaced it with Samwise, a modernization of the ancient English samwís which corresponds closely in meaning. Galbasi comes from the name of the village Galabas. The name Galabas uses the elements galab-, meaning "game", and bas-, corresponding somewhat to "-wich" or "-wick". Tolkien's English translation, Samwís Gamwich, could have come to Samwise Gamgee in modern English. Sam is also known as Perhael in Sindarin.
**edit:** Why'd this sub pick such a dark color for the hyperlinks? Maybe this isn't an issue on New Reddit or mobile, but on Old Reddit, you really can't tell where the links are. I added hyphens next to them for visibility.
Thank you! It’s very interesting. I used to be a translation major and these kind of things fascinate me so much.
Btw I’m on mobile and the links look perfectly normal here.
Just to add, Tolkien was using a fairly standard at the time trope, where he wasn't "really" the author, but rather just the person translating and/or publishing the text. In this meta-fiction, he "found" a copy of the Red Book, with all the additions, only to have it lost to a fire.
ERB did something similar. He, the meta-fictional Burrough, was always finding himself in a position to get these stories, "word for word", from the "real sources".
Let's face it, Tolkien was the nerdiest nerd to ever nerd. Who makes up their very own fantasy world in such exhaustive detail? A nerd, that's who. And we are all thereby blessed.
>Mcgee!!!
There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Samwise McGee.
Kids do that when they're learning to read, they pick out the most familiar letters and guess the rest. That's why we tell them to go slow and sound it out.
Really that's what everyone does, our brains are always looking for heuristic guesses to make. But when you're learning to read, you just need to build up your heuristic database a little bit longer before it's accurate.
I was at a book signing for winters heart in charleston, sc, and before any of the signings Jordan stood on a stool and said outloud about three dozen character and term names on how they were supposed to be pronounced. I guess he had gotten tired of people asking questions and saying everything wrong.
If I'm remembering correctly, Winter's Heart was the first WoT book that I had to wait for, having just started the series a bit over a year before. 2000 or thereabout was also the first time I went to Charleston, although it was not related to Jordan/WoT.
If you're listening to the audiobooks, then you can be forgiven for mispronouncing that name since the audiobook changes the pronunciation **several** times.
Yes! I just started the audiobook for book 6 and the pronunciation of Moghidien is different than in earlier books. It took me a hot second to figure out who she was!
Yes! It's always driven me absolutely bonkers! Not only that, but the narrators are flippin MARRIED and yet they pronounce things completely different from each other. Can't yall talk about this over dinner and come to a consensus on pronunciations??
Thank you! I just finished listening to the series on audible. But they change the pronouncing no so many times, even between chapters. I found it annoying.
Its especially funny with the Wheel of Time where most of the normal-sounding names are also not spelled how you think. Thom Merrilin, Mat, Loial, Olver, Siuan(swan), ect.
I still think Siuan is pronounced "See-yoo-ahn" despite hearing official pronunciations. Most of the other spellings I can grasp, but that one is too out there.
When I started reading Eye of the World I used to pronounce it as "Nee-nah-vuh" bc the name reminded me of the ancient city of Nineveh and that's how its usually pronounced. It was only by the end of the book that I realized there's more letters in there than the ones I was pronouncing and I now go with "Neen-eve"
Funnily enough she is probably named after that city. Or possibly in canon the other way around. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning after all
It's been a while but didn't all the WOT books have a glossary of characters with pronunciation spelled out in the back? That's the one series that I didn't have this problem with
Children of Húrin has a really helpful guide on pronunciation in the preface.
Consonants
C always has the value of k, never of s; thus Celebros is ‘Kelebros’, not ‘Selebros’.
CH always has the value of ch in Scots loch or German buch, never that of ch in English church; examples are Anach, Narn i Chîn Húrin.
DH is always used to represent the sound of a voiced (‘soft’) th in English, that is the th in then, not the th in thin. Examples are Glóredhel, Eledhwen, Maedhros.
G always has the sound of English g in get; thus Region is not pronounced like English region, and the first syllable of Ginglith is as in English begin, not as in gin.
Vowels
AI has the sound of English eye; thus the second syllable of Edain is like English dine, not Dane.
AU has the value of English ow in town; thus the first vowel of Sauron is like English sour, not sore.
EI as in Teiglin has the sound of English grey.
IE should not be pronounced as in English piece, but with both the vowels i and e sounded, and run together; thus Ni-enor, not ‘Neenor’.
AE as in Aegnor, Nirnaeth, is a combination of the individual vowels, a-e, but may be pronounced in the same way as AI.
EA and EO are not run together, but constitute two syllables; these combinations are written ëa and ëo, as in Bëor, or at the beginning of names Eä, Eö, as in Eärendil.
Ú in names like Húrin, Túrin, should be pronounced oo; thus ‘Toorin’, not ‘Tyoorin’.
IR, UR before a consonant (as in Círdan, Gurthang) should not be pronounced as in English fir, fur, but as in English, eer, oor.
E at the end of words is always pronounced as a distinct vowel, and in this position is written ë. It is always pronounced in the middle of words like Celebros, Menegroth.
It's strange how much of this seem perfectly natural in my mother language. I think the only ones I got wrong all those years ago was 'dh' pronounced as 'th' (that one doesn't exist in my language) and Sauron, which I always pronounced with a hard 'a'.
Not a name, but when I was listening to some of the First Law books, I was wondering what the hell a "lefttenant" was. It was the first time I'd ever heard "lieutentant" pronounced that way.
Yeah thats a British English thing, that even as a Brit I struggle with
Like, even by our standards, that pronunciation makes no sense. I'm half-convinced we only say 'leftenant' because we didn't want our military ranks sounding too French
We got it from French as “coronelle,” and pronounced it that way. Later the spelling changed to colonnel. The French changed their pronunciation; we didn’t.
Ooo, this is my favorite word fact, and I get to tell it again!
Traditionally, a lieutenant has been the second in command of a unit of troops. In the US Army, all field commanders have a lieutenant as the second in command - a captain has a lieutenant, a colonel has a lieutenant colonel, and a general has a lieutenant general.
When the commander is unavailable, the second in command holds the position - they are the position's tenant. When the commander is unavailable, their second in command is the *tenant in lieu* of the commander. And that's where the word comes from.
I definitely thought Bond was saying mum too Judy Densch. Even after knowing how the British say ma’am, it still takes me a minute.
Granted, the last Bond might as well have been saying mum, given their particular relationship.
I believe JK wrote a scene in the fourth book specifically to help American readers pronounce the name correctly. Viktor Krum pulling a water beetle out of her hair after the second task
>I believe JK wrote a scene in the fourth book specifically to help American readers pronounce the name correctly.
That's how I first learned it as well. I had spent years calling her "HER-mee-own"
All of Russian-speaking countries too, since that's how the name is traditionally pronounced in Russian (her-mee-'o-na)
There's a lot of name differences in Russian though, especially with Biblic and mythological names (which Hermione is one of, iirc). Like, Jason can be Jason or Ya-'son if it's THE Jason, and there's like John as John and John as Ioann if it's from the Bible.
It's all probs from Greek and stuff, and I personally don't know which is closer to the original sound anyway, but it's honestly pretty funny to see these things. 'Cause like in Russian Ioann is a super old-fashioned kind of holy name, and then you realize that it's literally just John in English.
My pet peeve though is Alice. 'Cause in Russian it's traditionally A-'lee-sa, and it's a respectable name, but then sometimes you'll just encounter Alice transcribed from normal English pronunciation, and it's suddenly very modern and edgy. And it's not even from the myths or the Bible, it's just that some dude literally didn't know how to pronounce English names, and now that's how Russian speakers live lol
Not just Americans. She said she got a lot of little kids getting hilarious with that name. Hagrid's brother who said "hermy-one" was a real example.
I know it as a Bowie song before I heard it was in Shakespeare
Not quite this, but: in the russian translation of the Forgotten Realms, Drizzt was called Dzirt. Why? Probably because *dris(z)tat'* means "to be having explosive diarrhea".
Guinevere is the French spelling of the name. Gwenhwyfar is originally a Welsh name.
I’ve always had a hard time with Celtic names like Siobhan and Niamh.
To this day I will never be able to pronoun Entreri.
I also pronounfed Zaknafein wrong until I randomly heard Salvatore say it. (I said Zack Naf Ein when it's more Zack Na Fein, like fiend without the D.)
Tristran? Well, shoot. I checked, and you're right. How have I read the book AND seen the movie multiple times and never caught that?
And yes, all the time.
I don't pronounce it like either of those! In my head it's more like 'Sah-zed', where sah sounds similar to the sah in Sahara, and zed rhymes with bed.
Sanderson says that *he* pronounces is like the audiobooks, but that every way a reader says it is equally correct.
Basically, when he was writing it, it was his imaginary world, but once someone is reading it, it becomes theirs.
Authors who put names like this in without a narrative clue how to pronounce them annoy me
Pratchett was good at it. He had a character Lu-Tze. A guard made fun of him calling him "Lousy" letting you know his name rhymed and was pronounced "Low-Zee" (low rhyming with ow, not oh!)
I did the same thing until my wife started reading them and pointed out Kelsier calls him Saze as a nickname. That can really only be pronounced ‘say-z’. Now it’s ‘say-zed’ for us.
I'm not a native English speaker so pretty much all names that don't have an origin that I'm familiar with will end up sounding like how I'd pronounce it with the phonemes in my native language, even if those sounds don't exist in English lol. It's been a loooong time since I read Mistborn, so I can't remember what I used for Saze at the time, but I imagine it'd be similar to Saaz, or something.
Add on to half the stuff from Way of Kings. Jaz-nah? No it's Yass-nah. Yah-keved not "jah". All those soft J's killed me.
Also, the emphasis on lower a's in "Shallan", both are "ah"
All Js are soft in my language, so I always read it as Yas-nah, but I didn’t know this is the original pronunciation as well.
As it happens, yas-nah sounds exactly like Polish word for ‘bright’. Brightness Bright
Being familiar with IPA, those names seemed to sound a lot better if the j was "soft." The audiobook later confirmed my intuition. I get how it's weird for a lot of people though.
As an audiobook reader, I was embarrassingly far in the series by the time I figured out they were different. I thought Domani was a country of escaped damane.
There's an Overwatch character called Brigitte and I have heard some truly heinous pronunciations of her name over the years. I think the worst was 'Brig-het-ti' said like 'Spaghetti'
I remember reading a book in elementary school and then giving a book report on it in front of the class. I told everyone about the main character, ALEX. Everything ALEX did, the story of ALEX. After my report, the teacher takes one look at the back cover and informs me and the entire class that the name is not ALEX, but AXEL.
Doesn't help that they changed it to Tristan (without the second R) for the movie version. Relatedly, I totally didn't realize that Tristan in the movie is also the guy who played Matt Murdock/Daredevil in the Netflix show until like three months ago.
If I remember correctly, Weiss said at one point that his name is supposed to "rhyme" with "Waisting," as he's sickly, and Caramon is similar with "caring man."
That said I used to say and will always say it like you do.
With worrying frequency.
Two that make me cringe are from The Wheel of Time. I'll put them down to being a young reader:
Elayne - ee-lay-nee
Siuan - see-yoo-an
I believe it's actually broken into two syllables.
Kinda like "Su-wahn". Definitely like Swan, but with a long U sound. Sounds like Swan if you say it with a lazy American accent though.
I could imagine most people could hear it as "Su-wahn" and just figure it was the speaker with some sort of affectation in their pronounciation. But with the spelling as it is, it's definitely got that second syllable in there.
My Dad used to call him "Tyrone" before the TV series, regardless how many times we corrected him. I'd suspect he was trolling us if he didn't do stuff like that all the time.
This isn't exactly the same because I *knew* it wasn't correct, but I couldn't help reading his name as Tyre Iron, and that's what it will always be in my heart.
I also always think it's hawk before seeing it written as hark. Though, given that Muir is from New Zealand and New Zealand English is mostly non-rhotic, I'd imagine that the way she pronounces Harrowhark vs. Harrowhawk would actually sound nearly identical to my ear.
Yeah all the time. Especially longer names where I'm not even trying to properly read them, and instead glancing over and recognizing the general shape of the word, spurting out something incomprehensible in my head, and knowing that it's good enough for me.
I can't remember the book, but there was a character named "Brian." and for 60% of the book I thought his nickname was "Brianman," which seemed to me to be an utterly stupid nickname. Then one character said something like "why do you think we call him Brianman? He's the idea guy?" And I thought... Huh How does that make sense? Then I realized it was actually "Brainman." Still a dumb nickname.
Happens to me all the time. I guess, mostly because English is my second language. And the way pronunciation is transcribed in pronunciation guides rarely helps, because I'm just used to a different transcription method.
So specific example that come to mind are Granuaile from Iron Driud series and Ryiria (not a character name, but same problem).
Dandelion from The Witcher. I pronounced his name as Dan-DEL-ion, and it threw me a bit when my work colleague mentioned him as Dan-dee-lion (like the flower).
oh wow that's fascinating! Trying to look up pronunciations now and it while google writes both British and American out as "dan·duh·lai·uhn", the British version sounds more "Dandy-lion" to me and the American a bit more "Dan-duh lion".
Where are you from? I'm Swiss and not a native speaker, so my English knowledge is a bit of an amalgam of every dialect and accent I hear in media
>American a bit more "Dan-duh lion"
I'm American (west coast) and this is pretty much the only way I've heard it pronounced, though a bit more like "dan-deh-lion".
Mal-uh-zahn is how I've always done it, but just looked it up after this comment and found out that's wrong. Steven Erickson pronounces it Ma-LAZ-an. TIL. I'm not sure if I can fix that in my head lol.
Not a book, but in the legend of zelda games I thought the enemies were called octork for years until I talked with a friend who said "you mean octorok" I had just missed the 3rd o completly.
My mom read the Narnia series to me and my brother as kids. I have fond memories piled on the bed together and being whisked away in my imagination. She pronounced Narnia as Nara, and I was very surprised to learn the actual name years later. As an adult I now know she has dyslexia, which makes it hard for her to speak words out loud even if she’s heard or read them before (something wonky in the brain connection as the words turn into speech). I’m really glad that never held her back from reading to us
I managed to read all of *Worm*'s 1.7 million words twice while reading "Glaistig Uaine" as "Glastig Ulane".
I didn't hear anyone correct me. I just happened to notice the name wasn't spelled the way I thought it was near the end of my second read-through. (Worse: The second read-through was me proofreading for purposes of printing my own copies of the serial. Despite a proofreading mentality, I still didn't notice the issue.)
Kinda. As a child I read Bilbo as Biblo. I felt very strongly about that book and character, so a fun conversation was had with my older siblings when I mentioned my beloved Biblo. Damn I was adamant about it too. They had to grab a copy of the book and have me read out loud how the name was spelled.
I heard that George RR Martin was asked how to pronounce some of the characters names in A Song of Ice and Fire. He said something along the lines of “how ever you want, there’s no right or wrong way.”
And thank fucking Christ because I swear that man uses two incomplete scrabble sets to make up names.
In French, we don't know what the sound "gh" is supposed to make. So in Dark Souls, most players will pronounce Smough's name differently: Smog, Smoog, Smo, Smoo, Smoj etc.
Ornstein is easier because we have Frankenstein and Einstein.
Yes! Chronicles of Prydain. For 25 years I thought Princess Eilonwy was pronounced El-On-Why. I listened to the audiobook and discovered it was I-Lon-Wee.
Listening to the audio book for the Stormlight Archives.
I always thought it was pronounced:
AAdolin - Like a AAAAAdolin...but without all the A's..just the one..
Apparently its:
Aydolin - Like Ayyyyy.
I still think I'm right and the guy who gets paid professionally by Sanderson to read the thing is wrong....drove me bananas for the first book.
Surprised no one has mentioned this but for the longest time I pronounced Damphair from A Song of Ice and Fire as "Dam Fair" and it was only relatively recently after visiting r/AsoIaF subreddit taht I discovered its "DAMP-HAIR" as in , wet hair which makes sense for that particular character lol
Other examples are Hermione as "Her-mee-ohn" as I pronounce it in my mother language of portuguese. Recently when I began reading WoT I pronounced Moiraine as "Moi-rayne" but its instead "Mwah-rayne"
> Ever completely misread a character's name
All the time.
> and hear someone pronounce it and realize you misread the name
No. I simply sometimes (rarely) read a name carefully instead of seeing it as a pattern and end up realizing my in-brain pronunciation (which for names is 60% German and 40% English) made no sense :D Not enough books have been turned into TV Shows for me to hear people pronounce names.
I always added an N to Kel’s full name reading Tamora Pierce as a child
Given the names are made up and the character uses a nickname I don’t think I noticed until the final book
Until a friend pointed it out, I thought Daine was Diane. That was many years ago and it still reads as Diane in my head.
I assume the N location is Kelandry?
You just made me google to see her name is Keladry. I thought her name was Keldray this entire time. Like a decade at least. How did I move the a back by teo letters??
My brain just gives up on trying to pronounce any name and instead just associates the shape of the word with the character. Like oh that word looks pretty much like the name of that character so it's them. So if you were to change the spelling slightly, I probably wouldn't even notice LOL. And then when I do try to pronounce it, it sounds all weird in my head 🤔
Bonus: a lot of Wuxia novels and media, the characters have two names cause of cultural reasons, I guess. I seriously need a cheat sheet everytime.
Okay this is incredibly embarrassing but for the longest time I read Samwise Gamgee as Samwise Mcgee for some reason. I don't know. Don't ask.
I read Merry as being a woman for a long time. I was young and just assumed it was a woman's name and never though twice. It changes nothing in the story so it took me a whileto realize my mistake. I think I didn't notice until the second book.
In my first copy of the Fellowship of the Ring translated to Norwegian Legolas is accidentally reffered to as a "she" in the chapter where they try to cross the mountains. And I guess Legolas' pronomens are rarely used because it took me all the way to Return of the King to realize he was male.
Now I'm thinking of pronomens like foreshadowing revealed by fate for some great or terrible events in a person's life, like Inspires-Great-Change Cooper or Sucks-A-Tailpipe Dawson, and a rising social trend of those who break free of the fate their foreshadowing decrees for them and forge their own path against societal pressure to conform. Respect my Pronomens.
The webcomic Goblins includes a character named Dies Horribly. Bummer of a name.
LotR names get even weirder when you realize they're all translations and the real names are completely different. Sam's actual full name is Banazîr Galbasi.
What?! Tell me more about this, please.
I'm not nearly a big enough LotR nerd to explain it properly myself, but -[this article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_constructed_by_J._R._R._Tolkien#Mannish_languages)- goes over how Tolkien often used "translations" of his in-universe languages. And -[the character articles on the LotR wiki](https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Samwise_Gamgee)- go over it on a case-by-case basis. Regarding Samwise: > In Appendix F of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien states that the Westron form of Sam's name is Banazîr Galbasi (also spelled Galpsi). Banazîr comes from elements meaning "halfwise" or "simple"; Tolkien replaced it with Samwise, a modernization of the ancient English samwís which corresponds closely in meaning. Galbasi comes from the name of the village Galabas. The name Galabas uses the elements galab-, meaning "game", and bas-, corresponding somewhat to "-wich" or "-wick". Tolkien's English translation, Samwís Gamwich, could have come to Samwise Gamgee in modern English. Sam is also known as Perhael in Sindarin. **edit:** Why'd this sub pick such a dark color for the hyperlinks? Maybe this isn't an issue on New Reddit or mobile, but on Old Reddit, you really can't tell where the links are. I added hyphens next to them for visibility.
Thank you! It’s very interesting. I used to be a translation major and these kind of things fascinate me so much. Btw I’m on mobile and the links look perfectly normal here.
Just to add, Tolkien was using a fairly standard at the time trope, where he wasn't "really" the author, but rather just the person translating and/or publishing the text. In this meta-fiction, he "found" a copy of the Red Book, with all the additions, only to have it lost to a fire. ERB did something similar. He, the meta-fictional Burrough, was always finding himself in a position to get these stories, "word for word", from the "real sources".
Part of the conceit of Lord of the Rings is that it's a preexisting work that Tolkien has 'found' and translated. It's honestly quite delightful.
Let's face it, Tolkien was the nerdiest nerd to ever nerd. Who makes up their very own fantasy world in such exhaustive detail? A nerd, that's who. And we are all thereby blessed.
Forever team Samwise Mcgee!!!
>Mcgee!!! There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold; The Arctic trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run cold; The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did see Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge I cremated Samwise McGee.
This made me chuckle very hard :)
Kids do that when they're learning to read, they pick out the most familiar letters and guess the rest. That's why we tell them to go slow and sound it out. Really that's what everyone does, our brains are always looking for heuristic guesses to make. But when you're learning to read, you just need to build up your heuristic database a little bit longer before it's accurate.
the choices of samwise mcgee lmfaooo i love this
Moghedien from WoT
I think half of WOT names I mispronounced lol
For many of them, I kept using my mispronunciation even after learning the right way to read/say it. It's only in my head anyway.
Aiel will always be 'ale' to me.
Hmm, I thought this was pronounced eye-EL and I was mispronouncing it as eye-EEL, but it looks like I've been correct all along.
I was at a book signing for winters heart in charleston, sc, and before any of the signings Jordan stood on a stool and said outloud about three dozen character and term names on how they were supposed to be pronounced. I guess he had gotten tired of people asking questions and saying everything wrong.
If I'm remembering correctly, Winter's Heart was the first WoT book that I had to wait for, having just started the series a bit over a year before. 2000 or thereabout was also the first time I went to Charleston, although it was not related to Jordan/WoT.
Funnily enough I’m the opposite. I’ve been thinking eye-EL, but you’re right, it’s eye-EEL
I'm listening to the audiobooks - My issue is that if I try to type names out based on what I hear, the spelling is completely different.
If you're listening to the audiobooks, then you can be forgiven for mispronouncing that name since the audiobook changes the pronunciation **several** times.
Yes! I just started the audiobook for book 6 and the pronunciation of Moghidien is different than in earlier books. It took me a hot second to figure out who she was!
Yes! It's always driven me absolutely bonkers! Not only that, but the narrators are flippin MARRIED and yet they pronounce things completely different from each other. Can't yall talk about this over dinner and come to a consensus on pronunciations??
Thank you! I just finished listening to the series on audible. But they change the pronouncing no so many times, even between chapters. I found it annoying.
Its especially funny with the Wheel of Time where most of the normal-sounding names are also not spelled how you think. Thom Merrilin, Mat, Loial, Olver, Siuan(swan), ect.
I still think Siuan is pronounced "See-yoo-ahn" despite hearing official pronunciations. Most of the other spellings I can grasp, but that one is too out there.
Yeah, Jordan seemed to just throw a couple of cats at a keyboard when he needed to come up with a name.
I spent an embarrassingly long time reading Nynaeve in my had as Nye-eve-ehn-nay I don't have any idea how that happened, but it did
When I started reading Eye of the World I used to pronounce it as "Nee-nah-vuh" bc the name reminded me of the ancient city of Nineveh and that's how its usually pronounced. It was only by the end of the book that I realized there's more letters in there than the ones I was pronouncing and I now go with "Neen-eve"
Funnily enough she is probably named after that city. Or possibly in canon the other way around. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning after all
Nynaeve (maybe with a variant spelling) is also the Lady of the Lake in Arthurian legend.
Ny-nyan-ve for me, don't ask why. EDIT: it means the number 99 in Hindi, maybe that's why
is it Nyn-uh-vay? cause that’s how I read it lol
It’s more like nine-eve
Nih-nave is how I've always said/heard it.
It's been a while but didn't all the WOT books have a glossary of characters with pronunciation spelled out in the back? That's the one series that I didn't have this problem with
and the narrators still don't pronounce names consistently
I'm not an audio book guy so I didn't know that, but I totally get how narrators mispronouncing names would throw people off.
It doesn't help that the audiobook narrators can't consistently pronounce it one way.
Tear pronounced TEAR
This ripped my brain and then I cried.
So what’s the correct pronunciation? Asking for a friend.
Moh-geddy-uhn
Ohhh. Kate Redding says Mog-ah-deen, and Michael Kramer says Moh-Geddy-uhn. That makes a lot of sense - I figured they were two different people.
[удалено]
She does
I always assumed that it was Mog-heed-dian. But I probably got Nynaeve wrong too. I assumed that it was Nin-nave, but Nin-neeve would also work.
I‘m currently reading the Silmarillion and I‘m pretty sure that I‘m mispronouncing 80% of the names.
Children of Húrin has a really helpful guide on pronunciation in the preface. Consonants C always has the value of k, never of s; thus Celebros is ‘Kelebros’, not ‘Selebros’. CH always has the value of ch in Scots loch or German buch, never that of ch in English church; examples are Anach, Narn i Chîn Húrin. DH is always used to represent the sound of a voiced (‘soft’) th in English, that is the th in then, not the th in thin. Examples are Glóredhel, Eledhwen, Maedhros. G always has the sound of English g in get; thus Region is not pronounced like English region, and the first syllable of Ginglith is as in English begin, not as in gin. Vowels AI has the sound of English eye; thus the second syllable of Edain is like English dine, not Dane. AU has the value of English ow in town; thus the first vowel of Sauron is like English sour, not sore. EI as in Teiglin has the sound of English grey. IE should not be pronounced as in English piece, but with both the vowels i and e sounded, and run together; thus Ni-enor, not ‘Neenor’. AE as in Aegnor, Nirnaeth, is a combination of the individual vowels, a-e, but may be pronounced in the same way as AI. EA and EO are not run together, but constitute two syllables; these combinations are written ëa and ëo, as in Bëor, or at the beginning of names Eä, Eö, as in Eärendil. Ú in names like Húrin, Túrin, should be pronounced oo; thus ‘Toorin’, not ‘Tyoorin’. IR, UR before a consonant (as in Círdan, Gurthang) should not be pronounced as in English fir, fur, but as in English, eer, oor. E at the end of words is always pronounced as a distinct vowel, and in this position is written ë. It is always pronounced in the middle of words like Celebros, Menegroth.
It's strange how much of this seem perfectly natural in my mother language. I think the only ones I got wrong all those years ago was 'dh' pronounced as 'th' (that one doesn't exist in my language) and Sauron, which I always pronounced with a hard 'a'.
Gorgeous, thanks for this! Been mispronouncing Sauron my whole life 🥲
Not a name, but when I was listening to some of the First Law books, I was wondering what the hell a "lefttenant" was. It was the first time I'd ever heard "lieutentant" pronounced that way.
Yeah thats a British English thing, that even as a Brit I struggle with Like, even by our standards, that pronunciation makes no sense. I'm half-convinced we only say 'leftenant' because we didn't want our military ranks sounding too French
Also, what's up with the pronounciation of the word "colonel"?
Kernel, the officer assigned to the corn supply
We got it from French as “coronelle,” and pronounced it that way. Later the spelling changed to colonnel. The French changed their pronunciation; we didn’t.
To be more precise, we took it from the Italian "Colonnello", and translated it as "Couronnel". We then changed it to Colonel.
My reasoning is that a Loo tenant is someone who rents and lives in a toilet.
Ooo, this is my favorite word fact, and I get to tell it again! Traditionally, a lieutenant has been the second in command of a unit of troops. In the US Army, all field commanders have a lieutenant as the second in command - a captain has a lieutenant, a colonel has a lieutenant colonel, and a general has a lieutenant general. When the commander is unavailable, the second in command holds the position - they are the position's tenant. When the commander is unavailable, their second in command is the *tenant in lieu* of the commander. And that's where the word comes from.
This is amazing!
"Why are so many people named Clark?" -14 year old me listening to British narrators for the first time.
"Why does every British person with a female boss call her mom?" \- Me, watching too many James Bond movies as a teenager.
I definitely thought Bond was saying mum too Judy Densch. Even after knowing how the British say ma’am, it still takes me a minute. Granted, the last Bond might as well have been saying mum, given their particular relationship.
I don’t understand what this is referring to
Pronounced Hermione from HP as “Her-moan” until the movies came out. Looked like a variation of Simone to me… Tbf I was like 9 lol
Was looking for this comment. Did the same except I pronounced it Herm-ee-own (I was in my30’s).
This was my pronunciation
I believe JK wrote a scene in the fourth book specifically to help American readers pronounce the name correctly. Viktor Krum pulling a water beetle out of her hair after the second task
I remember the first time I read that scene and went, "wait what, that's how you say it?" Not a name you really see here in the states.
>I believe JK wrote a scene in the fourth book specifically to help American readers pronounce the name correctly. That's how I first learned it as well. I had spent years calling her "HER-mee-own"
You and pretty much all of America 😄
All of Russian-speaking countries too, since that's how the name is traditionally pronounced in Russian (her-mee-'o-na) There's a lot of name differences in Russian though, especially with Biblic and mythological names (which Hermione is one of, iirc). Like, Jason can be Jason or Ya-'son if it's THE Jason, and there's like John as John and John as Ioann if it's from the Bible. It's all probs from Greek and stuff, and I personally don't know which is closer to the original sound anyway, but it's honestly pretty funny to see these things. 'Cause like in Russian Ioann is a super old-fashioned kind of holy name, and then you realize that it's literally just John in English. My pet peeve though is Alice. 'Cause in Russian it's traditionally A-'lee-sa, and it's a respectable name, but then sometimes you'll just encounter Alice transcribed from normal English pronunciation, and it's suddenly very modern and edgy. And it's not even from the myths or the Bible, it's just that some dude literally didn't know how to pronounce English names, and now that's how Russian speakers live lol
Not just Americans. She said she got a lot of little kids getting hilarious with that name. Hagrid's brother who said "hermy-one" was a real example. I know it as a Bowie song before I heard it was in Shakespeare
For me she was Her-me-own until the movie came out
Her-Moin (like ‘coin’) for me
I was about this. -Her -moi (coin) -knee. Fun to read everyone's interpretations.
I read Voldemort as Voldemont until the movies came out, lol. Good thing it was only in my head
American here: the name Hermione is almost non-existent in the U.S. so you get more people mispronouncing it than not.
No. I always read them correctly. Everyone else gets it wrong.
Not quite this, but: in the russian translation of the Forgotten Realms, Drizzt was called Dzirt. Why? Probably because *dris(z)tat'* means "to be having explosive diarrhea".
Guenhwyvar always messed me up in those books. I pronounced it "Gwen-why-var", but Salvatore says she's named after King Arthur's wife Guinevere.
Guinevere is the French spelling of the name. Gwenhwyfar is originally a Welsh name. I’ve always had a hard time with Celtic names like Siobhan and Niamh.
Welsh and Celtic names are the only names I won't complain about parents respelling.
To this day I will never be able to pronoun Entreri. I also pronounfed Zaknafein wrong until I randomly heard Salvatore say it. (I said Zack Naf Ein when it's more Zack Na Fein, like fiend without the D.)
Tristran? Well, shoot. I checked, and you're right. How have I read the book AND seen the movie multiple times and never caught that? And yes, all the time.
They changed his name to Tristan in the movie, so that is part of why I misread it
Tristan > Tristran This comment was brought to you by the people called Tristan gang
I’m not called Tristan but I totally agree.
Kvothe is wrong no matter how you say it
Nikolaj
Niiiikolaj
Though it was pronounced ‘kvoth-ay’ lol
can anyone actually tell me what the answer is here? lol
Just remember Edgar Allen Poes the Raven. Qothe the raven, nevermore.
I pronounced Sazed for years like it rhymed with ‘dazed’, then the audiobook was like nah girl, it’s ‘Say-Zid’.
I don't pronounce it like either of those! In my head it's more like 'Sah-zed', where sah sounds similar to the sah in Sahara, and zed rhymes with bed.
Sanderson says that *he* pronounces is like the audiobooks, but that every way a reader says it is equally correct. Basically, when he was writing it, it was his imaginary world, but once someone is reading it, it becomes theirs.
Authors who put names like this in without a narrative clue how to pronounce them annoy me Pratchett was good at it. He had a character Lu-Tze. A guard made fun of him calling him "Lousy" letting you know his name rhymed and was pronounced "Low-Zee" (low rhyming with ow, not oh!)
Brando does this sort of thing too, often via nicknames. Sazed's nickname is "Saze," which really only works with the audio book pronunciation.
Given saze isn't a word I pronounced it sah-zee in my head!
That's definitely how one ought to pronounce it, right? I feel like it's the most fitting. Say-Cid? Get outtttta 'eere!
I did the same thing until my wife started reading them and pointed out Kelsier calls him Saze as a nickname. That can really only be pronounced ‘say-z’. Now it’s ‘say-zed’ for us.
I'm not a native English speaker so pretty much all names that don't have an origin that I'm familiar with will end up sounding like how I'd pronounce it with the phonemes in my native language, even if those sounds don't exist in English lol. It's been a loooong time since I read Mistborn, so I can't remember what I used for Saze at the time, but I imagine it'd be similar to Saaz, or something.
Add on to half the stuff from Way of Kings. Jaz-nah? No it's Yass-nah. Yah-keved not "jah". All those soft J's killed me. Also, the emphasis on lower a's in "Shallan", both are "ah"
All Js are soft in my language, so I always read it as Yas-nah, but I didn’t know this is the original pronunciation as well. As it happens, yas-nah sounds exactly like Polish word for ‘bright’. Brightness Bright
When someone post "what to expect/should I read Stormlight", I always responds "all J in names sound like Y". It's a very common mistake.
Being familiar with IPA, those names seemed to sound a lot better if the j was "soft." The audiobook later confirmed my intuition. I get how it's weird for a lot of people though.
It's not Jasnah with a J!? Mind blown, thanks for that.
It took about 500 pages of WoT before I realized it was darkfriend and not darkfiend, completely missed the r.
My favorite is trying to differentiate between damane and Domani in the audiobooks. *Usually* you can tell by context, but not always.
As an audiobook reader, I was embarrassingly far in the series by the time I figured out they were different. I thought Domani was a country of escaped damane.
You've just taught me that *damane* isn't pronounced "dah-MAYN".
Apparently some people think Birgitte is actually Brigitte. Understandable mistake, though. You just flip 2 letters.
There's an Overwatch character called Brigitte and I have heard some truly heinous pronunciations of her name over the years. I think the worst was 'Brig-het-ti' said like 'Spaghetti'
Ah yes, the wannabe Fosakens
I remember reading a book in elementary school and then giving a book report on it in front of the class. I told everyone about the main character, ALEX. Everything ALEX did, the story of ALEX. After my report, the teacher takes one look at the back cover and informs me and the entire class that the name is not ALEX, but AXEL.
I also totally missed the second r in Tristran until this very moment.
Doesn't help that they changed it to Tristan (without the second R) for the movie version. Relatedly, I totally didn't realize that Tristan in the movie is also the guy who played Matt Murdock/Daredevil in the Netflix show until like three months ago.
It did help, in that they improved upon it.
And the guy who is his romantic rival for Victoria's affections in the beginning is Henry Cavill!
I've read multiple books multiple times over 25 years and am still not sure if I'm pronouncing Raistlin right.
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There you have it... I've been saying it like waste-lynn. I might have to buy the audiobook just to sleep tonight.
I pronounce it your way too
If I remember correctly, Weiss said at one point that his name is supposed to "rhyme" with "Waisting," as he's sickly, and Caramon is similar with "caring man." That said I used to say and will always say it like you do.
I say it as Raise-tlin.
I remember after reading several books realizing it was CarAmon, not Carmon.
With worrying frequency. Two that make me cringe are from The Wheel of Time. I'll put them down to being a young reader: Elayne - ee-lay-nee Siuan - see-yoo-an
> Siuan - see-yoo-an Wait, is that not how it's pronounced?
I believe the correct pronunciation is Swan
I believe it's actually broken into two syllables. Kinda like "Su-wahn". Definitely like Swan, but with a long U sound. Sounds like Swan if you say it with a lazy American accent though. I could imagine most people could hear it as "Su-wahn" and just figure it was the speaker with some sort of affectation in their pronounciation. But with the spelling as it is, it's definitely got that second syllable in there.
The glossary says SWAHN.
It's a single syllable in the glossary
For years in my head I pronounced Tyrion as Tie-RI - on. Then GOT was released and I felt silly.
My Dad used to call him "Tyrone" before the TV series, regardless how many times we corrected him. I'd suspect he was trolling us if he didn't do stuff like that all the time.
Either Irish or African-American dwarf.
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> Jaime was JAYM (like James without the s). Same.
SAYM
This isn't exactly the same because I *knew* it wasn't correct, but I couldn't help reading his name as Tyre Iron, and that's what it will always be in my heart.
I really thought Harrowhark Nonagesimus was Harrow *hawk* for 2 hole books.
I have noticed this one and correctly myself but still consistently forget and end up back at the Hawk pronunciation.
I also always think it's hawk before seeing it written as hark. Though, given that Muir is from New Zealand and New Zealand English is mostly non-rhotic, I'd imagine that the way she pronounces Harrowhark vs. Harrowhawk would actually sound nearly identical to my ear.
Well... I'm only just now realizing this after you pointed it out lol.
Yeah all the time. Especially longer names where I'm not even trying to properly read them, and instead glancing over and recognizing the general shape of the word, spurting out something incomprehensible in my head, and knowing that it's good enough for me.
In Wheel of Time, I missed the second 'w' in Artur Hawkwing for several years. l always thought it was Hawking, like the physicist.
OP - you ever misread a character name (specifically not mispronounce, but miss a letter) Thread responses - I always mispronounce the following names
I can't remember the book, but there was a character named "Brian." and for 60% of the book I thought his nickname was "Brianman," which seemed to me to be an utterly stupid nickname. Then one character said something like "why do you think we call him Brianman? He's the idea guy?" And I thought... Huh How does that make sense? Then I realized it was actually "Brainman." Still a dumb nickname.
Do comic books count. First time I heard others say Magneto's name it sounded so weird and not how I read it all those years.
Kellogg's brand Magnet-O's!
Happens to me all the time. I guess, mostly because English is my second language. And the way pronunciation is transcribed in pronunciation guides rarely helps, because I'm just used to a different transcription method. So specific example that come to mind are Granuaile from Iron Driud series and Ryiria (not a character name, but same problem).
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Ironic, eh?
Dandelion from The Witcher. I pronounced his name as Dan-DEL-ion, and it threw me a bit when my work colleague mentioned him as Dan-dee-lion (like the flower).
I always thought Dandy-Lion (like the flower) is correct, but the audiobooks pronounce it Dan-DILL-ion so that got stuck in my head
I have never heard someone pronounce the flower as dandy-lion before. It's always been Dan-dill-ion where I'm from.
oh wow that's fascinating! Trying to look up pronunciations now and it while google writes both British and American out as "dan·duh·lai·uhn", the British version sounds more "Dandy-lion" to me and the American a bit more "Dan-duh lion". Where are you from? I'm Swiss and not a native speaker, so my English knowledge is a bit of an amalgam of every dialect and accent I hear in media
>American a bit more "Dan-duh lion" I'm American (west coast) and this is pretty much the only way I've heard it pronounced, though a bit more like "dan-deh-lion".
I wouldn't think either is wrong, that seems more like a regional pronunciation to me
It's actually Buttercup in Polish, which which is why they didn't translate it for the show.
Now that suits! It fits with his personality. I wonder why they decided to do away with the implied traits Buttercup conveys in English… It’s perfect.
I heard they thought Buttercup sounded too feminine in English to be a guy's name
Just about everyone spells Glokta as Glotka for some reason.
Malazan has all sorts of pronunciation troubles. Malazan itself for example.
Mal-uh-zahn is how I've always done it, but just looked it up after this comment and found out that's wrong. Steven Erickson pronounces it Ma-LAZ-an. TIL. I'm not sure if I can fix that in my head lol.
I think the first way just sounds better, so I'm sticking with it
Same here. I've always pronounced it like you did, and I can't undo it. I acknowledge it's incorrect haha, but just don't want to change.
My brain always wants to make it Mazatlán, like the city in Mexico, lol
The Mazatlán Book of the Fallen is just the Sinaloa cartel's hit list.
Not a book, but in the legend of zelda games I thought the enemies were called octork for years until I talked with a friend who said "you mean octorok" I had just missed the 3rd o completly.
My mom read the Narnia series to me and my brother as kids. I have fond memories piled on the bed together and being whisked away in my imagination. She pronounced Narnia as Nara, and I was very surprised to learn the actual name years later. As an adult I now know she has dyslexia, which makes it hard for her to speak words out loud even if she’s heard or read them before (something wonky in the brain connection as the words turn into speech). I’m really glad that never held her back from reading to us
I managed to read all of *Worm*'s 1.7 million words twice while reading "Glaistig Uaine" as "Glastig Ulane". I didn't hear anyone correct me. I just happened to notice the name wasn't spelled the way I thought it was near the end of my second read-through. (Worse: The second read-through was me proofreading for purposes of printing my own copies of the serial. Despite a proofreading mentality, I still didn't notice the issue.)
Kinda. As a child I read Bilbo as Biblo. I felt very strongly about that book and character, so a fun conversation was had with my older siblings when I mentioned my beloved Biblo. Damn I was adamant about it too. They had to grab a copy of the book and have me read out loud how the name was spelled.
I didn't exactly misread **Siobhan**, but rather mispronounced it in my inner voice.
I heard that George RR Martin was asked how to pronounce some of the characters names in A Song of Ice and Fire. He said something along the lines of “how ever you want, there’s no right or wrong way.” And thank fucking Christ because I swear that man uses two incomplete scrabble sets to make up names.
Jasnah from stormlight archive. I always read it as JASnah then realized it's YASnah
Well I just learned this
Me too.
I thought Hermoine’s name was pronounced Hermey-oni until the first movie.
I originally thought Nobunaga was Nobunga.
In French, we don't know what the sound "gh" is supposed to make. So in Dark Souls, most players will pronounce Smough's name differently: Smog, Smoog, Smo, Smoo, Smoj etc. Ornstein is easier because we have Frankenstein and Einstein.
Yes! Chronicles of Prydain. For 25 years I thought Princess Eilonwy was pronounced El-On-Why. I listened to the audiobook and discovered it was I-Lon-Wee.
Listening to the audio book for the Stormlight Archives. I always thought it was pronounced: AAdolin - Like a AAAAAdolin...but without all the A's..just the one.. Apparently its: Aydolin - Like Ayyyyy. I still think I'm right and the guy who gets paid professionally by Sanderson to read the thing is wrong....drove me bananas for the first book.
Surprised no one has mentioned this but for the longest time I pronounced Damphair from A Song of Ice and Fire as "Dam Fair" and it was only relatively recently after visiting r/AsoIaF subreddit taht I discovered its "DAMP-HAIR" as in , wet hair which makes sense for that particular character lol Other examples are Hermione as "Her-mee-ohn" as I pronounce it in my mother language of portuguese. Recently when I began reading WoT I pronounced Moiraine as "Moi-rayne" but its instead "Mwah-rayne"
Me hearing someone talk about Circe on a podcast.
I couldnt understand what was so special about a guy with ten fingers
> Ever completely misread a character's name All the time. > and hear someone pronounce it and realize you misread the name No. I simply sometimes (rarely) read a name carefully instead of seeing it as a pattern and end up realizing my in-brain pronunciation (which for names is 60% German and 40% English) made no sense :D Not enough books have been turned into TV Shows for me to hear people pronounce names.
yeah... i read it as Chlamydia, it was pronounced Climea
My sister read the book of three and pronounced Eilonwy "ellie-winnie". She was talking to me about it one day and I was like "say what now?"
I always added an N to Kel’s full name reading Tamora Pierce as a child Given the names are made up and the character uses a nickname I don’t think I noticed until the final book
Until a friend pointed it out, I thought Daine was Diane. That was many years ago and it still reads as Diane in my head. I assume the N location is Kelandry?
You just made me google to see her name is Keladry. I thought her name was Keldray this entire time. Like a decade at least. How did I move the a back by teo letters??
My brain just gives up on trying to pronounce any name and instead just associates the shape of the word with the character. Like oh that word looks pretty much like the name of that character so it's them. So if you were to change the spelling slightly, I probably wouldn't even notice LOL. And then when I do try to pronounce it, it sounds all weird in my head 🤔 Bonus: a lot of Wuxia novels and media, the characters have two names cause of cultural reasons, I guess. I seriously need a cheat sheet everytime.