Blogmas Day 21 – Time Out – ‘I’m sorry, how do you pronounce your name?’

 

Disclaimer – This is Time Out. Where we discuss. That’s a bad disclaimer so let’s move on.

Hey everyone,

and sorry for that weird disclaimer. But it’s time for another discussion post. And this time I want to discuss something related to authors or writers. Names. I don’t know why but authors seem to love giving their characters the weirdest or the most difficult names to pronounce. Like we know you authors want to be original and different, but sometimes you all take that originality way too far.

Also note that I am in no way making fun of the authors or the book or the characters. I just want to talk about how it’s becoming difficult and difficult to pronounce a character’s name.

Let’s take Hermione (from Harry Potter series) as an example. Now any Potterhead out there would be like, ‘pfft, this is easy to pronounce.’ And yes, I know this is easy to pronounce. But the young eleven year old me didn’t know that. I remember when I started reading this series, I pronounced Hermione as Her-me-oh-knee. I guess Victor Krum and I were twinning, but seriously how is one supposed to pronounce Hermione. I was pretty sure I was pronouncing it right, when my sister brought me back down to Earth and told me that it’s pronounced as Her-my-a-knee. And even now when a person reads Harry Potter first time, most of the time they always pronounce Hermione as Her-me-oh-knee.

 

The let’s come to this Wattpad novel, The Face Thief, I just found. Now the novel is amazing, the plot is amazing but the names, Yeah, I’m having trouble with them. The names are actually Russian but was it so important to add this name in the book, and also when the world’s worst name-pronouncer person is reading it. So the character’s full name is ‘Malkovya “Kovya” Karazamova‘. When I read it I was amazed. I had never heard of a name like this. like why do you want to make it more difficult. It’s a good thing the author wrote a whole chapter dedicated to pronunciation but still I’ll always have to come back to the chapter to see how the name is pronounced because I’ll definitely not remember. And not just one name there are a lot of names, not to mention the names of cities, regions, countries, soldiers etc.

 

And these are just two names. There are a thousand names out there which when you first read, seem absolutely ridiculous. My question is why? Why do authors do this to us?  I mean what did I do wrong that you have to punish me by including the most unusual names in your books?

Do you, like me, sometimes feel that authors could have gone for a much easier and less unique name or do you feel that these names make the story more magical. Tell me in the comments below and I’ll see you next time.

Ps – Can someone tell me how to pronounce Levi (from Fangirl) is it Lee-vey or Lee-vai.

Ps s – I have a challenge for you all. Try pronouncing ‘Inessa Arshavina‘ 5 times without fail.

Thanks for Reading***

Spread Book Love

~~~~~~~~~~