Quote:
Originally Posted by QuikSand
So, I have an odd contribution to this discusssion.
It seems... without realizing it... that Mrs Q and I have cursed our daughter with an un-pronouncable name. *sigh*
We had several different boy or girl names in mind when she was born, we spent a few hours with her, and ultimately settled on the name Elisa -- it's a once-common derivative of Elizabeth, and appears in many baby name books with allusions to reasonably wide use in French, Spanish, and Italian. I have known a couple people with the name, always thought it was pretty, and it seemed like the best fit among our various contenders once we got a chance to meet our baby girl.
So, fast forward to now. She's nearing ten months, and it's perfectly clear -- almost nobody seems to be able to "get it." The name is, incidentally, pronounced like eh-LEE-sah. Instead, we get lots of things that sound like Alyssa, Eliza, Elsa, Eleeza, and I don't know what else.
I know there are bigger issues to worry about -- but have we cursed our daughter to live with a name that her friends and teachers will get wrong for her entire childhood? It honestly hadn't even occured to us before we started seeing so many of our friends and family stumble on the name. *sigh*
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you just said it, "
allusions to reasonably wide use in French, Spanish, and Italian". It's a very nice name, just not an English-only one. "eh-LEE-zah" is how it should be in French as an "s" in between two vowels becomes a "z". She might probably have to repeat her name a few times as she grows up, but that's a beautiful name that sounds as if it's pulling its root from many different other languages.
As a side not, sadly, as cute as I think it sounds in the "eh-LEE-sah" way (or even "eh-LEE-zah") this one would have been banned by my wife and I as people in Quebec have a sad tendency to end the "hah" in a "haw" way that is not as cute.
FM