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I’m French Canadian and we used to read Archie as a bathroom rag and I’d rather not say how I pronounce Jughead and Weatherbee even still to this day. On another note I remember being happily surprised Drizzt had a cameo in the original Baldur’s Gate ii game. My friend said you could scum save and roll stealing his very powerful swords. Never took the time to do it though (wasn’t a thief).
Ah yes, Menzobananazan
There’s always money in the Menzobananazan, Michael
You have no idea how hard it was to end up here and not there. No idea, Michael.
Pans to the Aztec Tomb
A surface dwelling dark elf society that’s established a sizeable banana empire in the tropics of Faerun.
My personal favorite is when you think your brain is pronouncing a coherent guess at it until the first time you try to say it aloud and realize your folly.
Recently read a book about chernobyl, and this was at least 50% of the Russian names for me
Poles: Hold my wódka
I started a comment about old Russian novels and patronyms and nicknames and got so confused by my own examples I erased it.
Her-me-own
The first time I tried to pronounce ‘Hermione’ outloud, I somehow ended up with ‘Her-Moyn’.
“Oh you mean hermi-one?”
Hermes One to Hermes Actual, do you read me?
This is ground control to Magus Tom
Thom.
Is it “tom” or do I make a TH sound, so it sorta sounds like “thumb?” 🤔
I read through Wheel of Time twice and still don’t know whether to pronounce the th in Thom. Thank you Robert Jordan
Me and my friends all had different ways of pronouncing Egwene.
I feel like the author just misspelled Ewgene trying to make it a fantasy version of Eugene.
Apparently her name came from Guinevere from the legends of King Arthur (also al’Thor = Arthur)
The mining gnomes are the worst. And no I won’t attempt to spell them.
svirfneblin
Bless you
The worst is when you read a book or series when you’re young and pronounce it in your mind one way. Then they make a movie or something and it’s pronounced very different, and you end up just staying mad about it every time you hear the other version.
I was like this with ‘aes sedai’ in Wheel of Time. Apparently the ‘aes’ is meant to be pronounced as “eyez”, but for me it’s “ace” 🤷
And then you listen to the audiobook and realize it’s just a super fucked up way of spelling steve
When you talk with someone about that book you’ve both read and realize that you both have a very different pronunciation of a character’s name.
No such problems, when your native language uses phonetic alphabet! Is the pronounciation like the author intended then? Likely not, but you can still pronounce every word, without having to think.
I find this weirdly sad. I always tried to understand the name of the character and how it may be pronounced (I’m seriously going to include a glossary with IPA for all proper nouns if I ever produce anything for real publication). To me it’s a part of the world-building and I almost recoil at just replacing it with nonsense.
All the elvish in the appendices couldn’t save Gary the Eagle.
Borsk Fey’lya
Ysalimir
Mitth’raw’nuruodo
Timothy Zahn has Lucas’s flair for naming. But he really doesn’t give a damn if you can say it out loud or not. At least he’s self aware enough that the last one is canonically unpronounceable to most beings of other species.
You know, I sometimes forget I’m not the last of SW EU fans living.
There are dozens of us! Dozens!
(said with six upvotes over the root comment)
(there are some)
I can’t think of any character like that off the top of my head, but yeah, I’ve done that
Slartibartfast
I told you it wasn’t important.
