Here’s an interesting one. I was messing about with something with speech synthesis and I got it to pronounce ‘Andrea.’ You know, the real name of Twilight, Andrea Morgan. It said it in a way which I had not expected, and I was wondering how you, the readers, think it’s pronounced.
So, is it And-ree-ah, or An-dray-ah? Let me know in the comments.
Witches and Ray-Guns 
For a woman’s/girls name, I’ve always heard And-ree-ah.
However, I was at school with a lad called Andy. His father was Italian, and Andy’s full name (for which he took a lot of ribbing) was Andrea. That was ponounced And-ray-ah. (This was in Surrey in the 1970s.)
im from Germany so I read it german wich is mor like An-drre-ah with a rolld r and the a sounds more like the letter R.
That’s one I haven’t thought of.
Am from Norway and the german pronounciation is pretty much the same one as I have
Mostly Ive heard it pronounced And-ree-ah, but I knew someone many years ago who pronounced it Ondree-ah.
Forgive me for saying, but that sounds like someone English with a silver spoon wedged in their mouth so tight it would take explosives to dislodge. Still, that’s another one I haven’t heard before.
LOL, she was very much not a silver spoon recipient. Good old Texas born and raised middle class southern belle. The kind of woman who can say in the sweetest voice “bless your heart” and you know you just got politely called a complete moron, even if you have zero clue as to what that phrase means, and cant manage to get even the littlest bit upset by it. She was pretty damned awesome.
i’m from the us, and i have been pronouncing it an-dray-ah
Since her name is almost exactly the same as mine I pronounce it the way I pronounce my own. An-DRee-ah for hers and An-DRee-as for mine.
An-DRee-ah when I am in english mode and Andréa when I am in French mode.
When I was in grade school there was a Brian and a Bryan – they pronounced their names the same.
In the USA Kathy tends to be a west coast spelling and Cathy an east coast spelling, both pronounced the same – Kathryn or Catherine.
I knew a woman named Caroline who pronounced her name Carol-Lynn. I read it as Carol-Line.
All that said, if I ever met a woman such as this in real life I’d pronounce her name however she wished … Thank you, Mistress Andrea!
For me, the feminine would be an-DREE-ah unless corrected. Masculine would be AUN-dray, unless corrected. Names are funny things, though. I have a good friend who’s half Scots and fluent in Scots Gaelic and is forever ranting about people mispronouncing names spelled in the Gaelic. For example, Chonchobair, which is Conner. Getting from a to b in that case is non intuitive. We’ll skip Welsh names altogether 😉
I’m good with (most) Welsh names. I went to university in Wales and while I never learned the language, at least pronouncing things right seemed kind of sensible. Gaelic names… Yeah, I’d need to be told.
My own name is either Neel or Nile depending upon who you ask. I used to say if you were Irish it was Nile, and if you were Scottish it was Neel, but that turned out to be too simple. For the record, when my parents picked that spelling, they pronounced it like Neel.
People will figure out a way to screw up on even simple names if the spelling is at all different from what they think it should be. My name for example, Arik isnt much different than Eric, yet the number of people who have just butchered it over the years is amazing.
I at one point thought it might be fun learn Welsh, although I’ve no idea where to find a tutor or anyone to speak with in my area.
I have no clue on many of the Welsh, Irish, or Scottish names, even the simple ones like Gwy. Does that name rhyme with bee, or eye, or something else? Then there are place names like Charles’s home in Kate on a Hot Tin Roof.
I think Gwy would be Goo-I, but don’t quote me. ‘w’ is usually an ‘oo’ sound and ‘y’ is an ‘i’ sound, except when it isn’t (varies north to south).
Offhand, I can’t remember a name of Charles’s family seat, but I think it’s a real place (IIRC). The hall isn’t real, but the location is. If you look it up on Wikipedia, I think there’s a pronunciation guide.
The pitfalls of reading a name versus hearing it spoken, specifically by the person whose name it is and especially if they’re from a different country or speaking a different language.
… all this time I’ve been pronouncing your name Nee-All in my mind. I guess the double L at the end messed me up. I can easily see it as Neel or Neal, but my American mind can’t quite wrap my mind around “Niall” as “Nile.”
Ah, but which “i” sound? The “i” in “it”, the “i” in “kite”, or the “i” in “Niall”? 🙂
Gwy to me has always been Gwhy in my head. Welsh rules might be applicable but I’m iffy on Speaker and co. knowing Welsh pronunciation let alone applying it that instance. I know it did take me a while to a) realize and b) mentally pronounce Ceri as Kerri, not Seri.
I do find it useful when an author includes pronunciation guides. For example I’m currently re-reading Iron Princess, and if you hadn’t noted that TaiTai was TayTay, I’d be using TiTi (long I).
There’s a character called Ceri in the Hollows books. In the audiobook versions, it’s pronounced Seri, which the author admits was a mistake made when producing the pronunciation guide, but it was too late when she found out it was wrong.
The guide in The Iron Princess was produced precisely because the pronunciations were not necessarily easy, even if you speak Chinese, since I tweaked a couple, as I recall.
Things seem to have died down here, so I’ll just drop this in:
Her mother picked the name, and her mother comes from an Italian family. Hence, it was intended to be An-dray-ah. Weirdly, I hadn’t considered any other way of saying it until confronted with alternatives.
John: re speaking welsh, check the library. I read a intro to welsh book sometime back in 70’s when I was reading Susan Cooper’s Pentalogy. If your local doesn’t have it, maybe they can get through interlibrary loan.