I was watching a documentary on the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard recently and noticed how the final letter in his name is pronounced as a hard and very noticable ‘d’ (very similar to ‘guard’ in English), but in Danish, d’s that aren’t the first letter in a word are usually either very soft of omitted entirely. Premier League footballers Norregaard, Hoejbjerg and Vestergaard are the same: The ‘d’s and the ‘g’ in Hoejbjerg are not spoken at all. Same with the actor Mads Mikkelsen, whose name is pronounced “Mas” and the fairytale writer Hans Christian Andersen (Anersen). Obviously, it’s not a big deal but it occurred to me that we might be butchering the names of tonnes of famous people. Any good examples the rest of us should know about?
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Lots of them unless said person speaks or has some knowledge of Spanish.
Václav Havel is often mispronounced. It’s more obvious since the Prague airport was named after him, and the foreigner airlines pronounce it more often bad than good.
Also now I have been watching the Olympics with the English commentary, and they usually put the stress in women’s name to “o” in ‘-ová” which is like the last possible place where to put the stress in Czech language. It sounds really bad, and I would think that “á” in the ending will help them to use it better, but not at all.
Van Gogh is always terrible. You either get the “van go” people or the “van *goff*” people. The A in van is pronounced like in bath and Gogh is with two hard g’s. Rembrandt is also always pronounced with the a in band in stead of bath.
So in short the answer is pretty much any name with an a. Or g/ch. Or oo. Or oe. Or ou. Come to think of it pretty much any vowel.
Literally anyone. In general, English speakers, who have no knowledge of Polish, mispronounce almost everything.
If you limit it to Americans mispronouncing things, pretty much anyone called Craig…
>Hans Christian Andersen (Anersen).
Realistically there’s no chance of an English speaker ever getting that one right due to the very similar name Anderson!
Oh there’re plenty. I could probably write a whole book.
Malin Åkerman for example. Super common mistake is to pronounce ‘Å’ like a regular ‘A’. ‘Å’ sounds like the ‘oa’ in the English “oar”. Same thing with anyone from the Skarsgård family.. Åå =/= Aa!
That said, I’ve heard many of them pronounce their ‘å’ as ‘a’, maybe because that’s what people are used to hearing.
This issue is probably true for all names containing å, ä or ö to be honest. People assume they’re all just pronounced like a or o.
Greta Thunberg? “Gretta Thannburk” with some kind of lisped ‘Th’-sound is heard all the time. People put to much emphasize on the wrong letters. The ‘e’ in Greta is long – “eee”. Hard to find any English word to mimic the sound.. The u in Thunberg is long, a bit like in “music”, but it doesn’t sound quite right either. The g is soft – “berj”. And like another person said, the ‘T’ is hard, despite the ‘h’ directly after it.
The double “a” names is a classic. Common examples being Martin Ødegaard and Erling Braut Haaland.
Foreigners tend to just pronounce it like a long “a”. However double A in Norwegian is prounounced like the letter “å”. And å is pronounced like the o sound in the american way of saying “Poor”. Or the O in “Oil”. It’s not a massive deal, the people themselves sometimes encourage the wrong pronunciation simply because its easier for foreigners. [Here you can see Ødegaard pronounce his name correctly and then how everyone else pronounces it](https://twitter.com/Arsenal/status/1354421451936452608?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1354421451936452608%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.redditmedia.com%2Fmediaembed%2Fl652xh%3Fresponsive%3Dtrueis_nightmode%3Dtrue). And to be clear, foreign people dont pronounce it like that because he told them to, but he rather just didnt care after everyone has mispronounced it for years.
For me the worst are (Johann Sebastian) Bach pronounced as “Bäck” and (Ferdinand) Porsche and the cars named after him as “Porsch”.
I’ve experianced more times than I can count that English speakers pronounce my name “Leif” as “Leaf”
Pretty much if you’ve played the game Kerbal Space Program, my name is sort of pronounced like the moon “Laythe” in that game. That’s the best description I honestly can come up with, but either way the important point is that it’s not pronounced “Leaf”
Honestly, almost all of them. English speakers never pronounce Finnish long consonants right, and a lot of our names have them. Häkkinen, Räikkönen, Valtteri Bottas, all the double consonants are supposed to be long. And alao the special vowels, ä and ö, are most of the time not there.
If they try to use the Greek name and not the Anglicised version…all of them.
Paul Verhoeven’s last name always gets pronounced like it’s verhoven with a O sound as in door and boat but in reality it’s oe as in shoe meaning it’s actually pronounced like a horse hoof in Dutch ( ver-hoof-en)
Interesting premise for a question. Why would you expect anyone speaking one language to (1) know the pronunciation of another language and (2) reflect a foreign phonology when speaking another language?
E.g. the pronunciation of van Gogh, which features two sounds not even found in English.
>Danish philosopher Kierkegaard
Main thing lost in English with Kierkegaard (and Nørregaard and Vestergaard) isn’t so much the silent d’s as “aa” representing an “oh” sound and not an “ah” sound. The last syllable in those names is pronounced “gore”, approx.
Well often if the name exists in english with the same or similar spelling then english speakers pronounce it the english way. Like “Michael” which in german is “mi-cha-ehl” or angela merkel which in german is “Un-gela (g like in angle) Meh-ar-kel.
I mean I don’t really mind that tho. Just saying we don’t do that the other way round. We even respect the american pronounciation of americans with german names.
>Which of your famous countrymen’s names are often mispronounced in English?
….. All of them???
It’s normal, though, it’s not like we can expect a Nation’s public to know everything about pronunciation in a foreign language. We butcher english names and brands too.
Almost all of them all the time, Swedish names slightly less so.
Almost all of them?
– Angila/Ängila Mörkel
– Görhardt Schr(English R)ouder
– Otto won Bismarck
– Ä as A
– Ö as O
– Ü as U
At least they know that “ß” is a double S sound.
Don’t even get me started on the mispronounciation of the 2 different “ch” sounds. Well, actually there are 3 and the 3rd one (K sound) they pronounce correctly, unintentionally.
But to be fair: don’t foreign language names get mispronounced pretty much in every language all the time? We do it too.
Well the 2 i instantly think of are Simo Häyhä and Carl Gustav Emil Mannerheim.
People pronounce Häyhä as ”Heya” but the H is a strong one. Also not Hayha or Heyha, HÄyHÄ.
And Mannerheim is not Männerheim, but MAnnerHeim. In Finnish A is not æ, it’s Aah.
Every name, but especially any name containing å, ä, ö, j or tj, sj.
* å /ɔ/ is pronounced somewhat like “awe” in RP accent.
* ä /ɛ~æ/ is pronounced somewhat like “air” in RP accent.
* ö /ø~œ/ is pronounced somewhat like “ir” in “bird” in New Zealand accent.
* j /j/ is pronounced like “y” in “yes”.
* sj /ɧ/ is somewhat pronounced like Scottish ch in “loch”, but softer.
* tj /ɕ/ is somewhat pronounced like “sh” in sheep, but with the flat of your tongue instead of your tip.
* “w” is pronounced like “v”.
* “th” is pronounced like “t”.
* “z” is pronounced like “s”.
* “g” at the end of names, and before e, i, y, ä and ö is pronounced like “y” in yes.
Some famous Swedes names pronounced in Swedish:
* [Alfred Nobel](https://forvo.com/word/alfred_nobel/#sv)
* [Astrid Lindgren](https://forvo.com/word/astrid_lindgren/#sv)
* [Björn Borg](https://forvo.com/word/bj%C3%B6rn_borg/#sv)
* [Greta Thunberg](https://forvo.com/word/greta_thunberg/#sv)
* [Ingrid Bergman](https://forvo.com/word/ingrid_bergman/#sv)
* [Peter Stormare](https://forvo.com/word/peter_stormare/#sv)
* [Stellan Skarsgård](https://forvo.com/word/stellan_skarsg%C3%A5rd/#sv)
More infamous than anything, but English speaker saying Eydolf Hitler instead of Adolf will never not annoy me. Like, yeah, fuck this dude, but at least say the name properly. Don’t see people having problems with pronouncing Genghis Khan or Stalin either.
Well actually a lot of people still pronounce Genghis Khan wrong. It ain’t Djingis Khan.
EDIT: for anyone saying “it’s closer to the actual pronunciation of GK” . No. It’s not. It would be Djenghis (like in Djent) , not Dschinghis like the 70s Pop Band also mentioned in the replies. I have no idea where people get the “i” in the first syllable from.
The bulk of them I’d say, some seem to have seeped into the American and British consciousness like Saoirse or Siobhán or Seán or Domhnall well enough that they avoid that fate
You also get insulting shit like “oh, and what’s that in English” or other bullshit like complaining about how our names are “spelt ridiculously” like John Cleese
I always find it funny that when Sky News reported on the posthumous pardoning of Maolra Seoighe without calling him by his actual name for most of it. They reported it as “Myles Joyce was executed in December 1882 along with two other men for his part in the murder of 5 members of the same family despite his co-accused insisting he was innocent”
Then finally 5 paragraphs later “Mr Joyce, *whose Irish name was Maolra Seoighe* was related to some of the family members”. It wasn’t his Irish name, it was just his name.
They couldn’t even manage to write his actual name for most of the article, never mind fucking *pronounce* it.
Marieke Lukas Rijneveld won the International Booker Prize in 2020 and I cringe everytime an English native speaker pronounces their last name as “Rishnefelt”.
No-one talks about us.
But probably the most messy is stuff that has “Õ”, “Ö” or “Ü” in it, probably “Ä”, too. In Russia people for some reason really struggled with the name “Indrek” and long vowels often become ridiculously short in the west.
Our composer “Arvo Pärt” often gets misspelled as “Arvo Part” and normally I would not mind but as Part means “duck” it just feels really stupid and disrespectful.
Ceaușescu (ș sounds like sh). I hear “Ceaucescu” (with a ch sound) a lot.
All of them lol. Nasal sounds and our R are a nightmare for 90% of english-speakers.
Eh any Spanish name in English is funny. I can think of Penelope . Everyone always says Penelopee… the last e is an “eh” sound lol . I heard some other slaughter not long ago but I usually just laugh tbh.
City wise Seville in English and it always takes me a second to realize they’re talking about Sevilla lmao
Also Toledo. There’s a Toledo in Ohio so I can’t blame them but it’s not Toleedo it’s To-Le-Do ✨ as in “Leg” .
Anything that has the e gets changed to an ee sound lol there’s only 5 vowels in Spanish yall I promise 😂
Michelangelo pronounced like *Mikelangelo* always cracks me up
Most of them, but Schrödinger is a rather simple name they have great difficulty with.
Everyone abroad says Soros wrong. The “S” is supposed to be what the “sh” sound is in English (in words like “shore”). It’s being mispronounced as Szorosz.
Since Scotland is an English speaking country I don’t know if it counts, but here are a few that are kinda fun.
Any Gaelic name is impossible to read accurately for an English speaker. See, Gaelic uses more or less the same Latin alphabet as English (with a lot of accented letters), but the actual sounds behind most letters are completely different.
For example, the name “Ruaridh” is basically unintelligible to an English speaker, but it’s actually just the Gaelic spelling of the name “Rory” (though it’s actually pronounced more like “Roory” in Gaelic).
Another fun one is the name “Mairi”, which is usually pronounced like the word “marry”, as in “to marry ones spouse”, but with more emphasis on the “Ah” sound. I find this one funny because English people just can’t seem to get it, always pronouncing it like “Mary”, but by some bizarre cosmic magic Americans of all people tend to actually get it right. Like, I just can’t think of any other British originating word that Americans somehow pronounce more accurately than English people.
This last one isn’t a name it’s just a word who’s English pronunciation annoys me, but the word “Loch” as in “Scottish lake” (though that actually isn’t a completely accurate translation) isn’t pronounced like the English word “lock”. The “-ch” sound is pronounced like how you would pronounce it in German, like “Bach”
Probably Michael Schumacher, Joachim Löw, Bastian Schweinsteiger and Friedrich Nietzsche
João hurts to hear.
Anything with an “r” is horribly butchered as well, usually.
My personal preference, where it fits, would be to instead of being called João, being called John (miguel/michael, ricardo/richard, some names have a pretty direct counterpart).
I mean, it’s preferable that whatever it’s being pronounced, because it doesn’t resemble what I’m called. If anything, a sad, even if well meaning, caricature of it.
Yet, the half dozen times I’ve tried to tell people this it’s met with some stubborness to try and pronounce it. Nothing against it, I’d have a hard time pronouncing, say, a polish name. I just don’t get the stubborness.
Every single one of them. It is physically impossible for foreign people to pronounce any finnish name correctly.
Pretty much all of them, although I must say the Eurosport cycling commentators have learned to pronounce Roglič and Pogačar almost accurately.
Any name with ä ä ö. Also, recently heard an American pronouncing Teemu Selänne. I thought he was having a stroke
In English some of our historical figures have their name translated…. Like: Cristoforo Colombo, Cesare, Raffaello Sanzio etc
So basically, as other said every single one
Well, the most common one for Croatian names is ending surnames. Lots of our surnames end in -ić which gets changed to -ic and consequently spoken as -ik. When in reality the final sound is closer to -itj/-ity/-its and -ich is acceptable from non-native speakers.
Example our prime-minister Plenković is often pronounced Plenkovik while better versions are Plenkovich/Plenkovits
Denys and Denis are different names with different pronounciations. I’m somewhat angry that Sergei and Serhii (Russian and Ukrainian version of the same name) is easier to consider for foreigners.
C’mon, when I worked with Arab countries, I did my best to distinguish Mohammad, Mohamed, and all the variations.