h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

If you are going to name a child, make sure that your relatives can pronounce the child's name. This might sound extremely obvious, but if you are of a nationality that has names that tend to be difficult to pronounce to native English speakers, you'll find it most convenient to come up with names that can be pronounced by both groups. That, and it's best to avoid arguments over what your child's name is.

For example, my real name is Andrea, but as there's no "dre" sound in Cantonese, I end up being called "Angela" by all of my relatives or worse, Andrewla. That, and we get into arguments over what my name is.

"Angela, could you bring over the dishes?"
"Grandma...my name is Andrea. You're mistaking me for my cousin again, and she's Alyssa."
"Your name is Angela! I am your grandmother; I ought to know!"

And so on and so forth. Just avoid the issue by finding an easy to pronounce name, and everybody will be happy.

That's true.... I think the name's become more commonly recognised in the last twenty years or so, but Irish names like "Siobhan" don't seem to trip well off English tongues. ("Cee...oh..bann", is it?)

I think Eiodhne o Brannion had the common sense to rewrite her name phonetically as "Enya" before she embarked on a musical career... can you imagine a radio DJ in England trying to wrap his tongue around "that was "Orinoco Flow" by ...."Eiodhne"?

then there's "Grainne", of course (pron "Gron-YA")
I also believe the Gaelic spelling of "Evelyn" is "Eibhlin" - same pronunciation, different spelling - but again, a pitfall to one who knows naught of Irish pronunciation.

Welsh names cause consternation, too... I know an old hippie who loved the tales of the Mabinogion so much, she named two daughters "Blodeuwedd" and "Rhiannon". A bad move, as she lived in Norfolk! Today, Blodeuwedd prefers to be Emma, and Rhiannon has opted to be Martha.

An alternative to weird "translations", is to give your child a name for each country. My daughter is called Catherine by our Australian/European family and friends, and either Catherine or Wassamol by our Thai family and friends - both names are listed on her birth certificate. My wife an I use either name when talking to her, regardless of where we are or who else is about, and she has no problems with this. As she also has a Thai family name, on those occassions when we use her full name it does seem to take a while, but she is quite proud of the fact that her full name has 27 letters!

One of the advantages of "dual names" is that, hopefully, it avoids the weird or embarrasing translation of one name to another language. In Australia there is a tendancy to "Europeanise" foreign names, especially Japanase or Indian ones - I work for a multinational company and we have several team members based in India, but I refuse to call Harprit "Harry" - yet I have no problem called my wife "Joe", perhaps because that is how she introduced herself to me (on the luckiest day of my life).

(Check the conversation on bookcrossing)

I know a girl with the surname Teague. Anyone from Northern Ireland or Ireland will tell you what a horrendous word that is. Her first name wasn't much better, being a strange misspelling of Iseult (of Tristan und Iseult, the protoceltic love story). Damn hippy parents.