Miriam
- Name
No info yet
- About Me
No info yet
- My Favorite Names
- No favorite names yet.
- My Recent Blog Comments
Baby Name Wizard Store
Celebrate with personalized baby name products! Custom birth announcements, invitations, bibs, onesies & more.
Start Shopping
ZR, Pitts was going for Ahn-jell, the normal pronunciation of Angelle. I imagine he was trying to ward off Angel, as in Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, and Uriel.
This discussion reminds me of a piece by the Pulitzer-Prize-winning syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts that I read long ago. In it he discussed why he named his daughter Onjel. The intended name was Angelle, but he was concerned about mispronunciation, so he went with the "phonetic" spelling Onjel. Frankly I was gobsmacked. Who in the likely circle of friends and acquaintances of a sophisticated author like Pitts would not know how to pronounce Angelle? My handyman, who was a high school dropout and, frankly, not the sharpest knife in the drawer, had a daughter Angelle, spelled and pronounced correctly. And in any case, when I see the spelling Onjel, my first thought is to pronounce the initial syllable like the preposition--and that's not the pronunciation Pitts was aiming for. IMO all Pitts accomplished was to make the daughter of a prize-winning author look like she had parents who couldn't spell, and I don't think that was his goal.
Apropos of this discussion here is an article on the results of a recent study which demonstrated that people (and corporations) with "difficult" names face a certain level of discrimination," and conversely those with "easy" names have an advantage. http://www.newsucanuse.org/thats-easy-for-you-to-say-pronounceable-names-a-big-advantage-says-study/ Something to think about when naming a child.... My son's name is Edward after my father. I would have named him for my father even if my father's name had been Nebuchadnezzer, but I must say that Edward is a no-problem name, no spelling problem, no pronunciation problem. He publishes his books (which sell to an international audience in a number of different languages) under Ed, and that is even less of a problem. My name Miriam has one English spelling and one Standard English pronunciation, but I still get Marian, Marion, Maryanne, Marilyn for reasons which are phonetically understandable. E.g., historically the -m of the Old English dative case merged with the -n of the accusative, and since the inflection no longer provided any information it eventually dropped off, leaving only a nasalized schwa which was even more useless and soon disppeared. The -s ending of the genitive and the plural did not participate in this change, and so we still have those endings today, but the nasals of the dative and accusative are so long gone that most English speakers do not know they ever existed. So no surprise that to a lot of ears Miriam and Marian sound alike. Erinne, I am one American English speaker who clearly distinguishes between Erin (with an 'e' as in 'get') and Aaron (with an 'a' as in 'at'). I am from the Mid-Atlantic, and I, unlike many Midwesterners (and others), have the Mary-marry-merry distinction. Unlike many Americans I see (or rather hear) nothing funny (or embarrassing) about someone named Harry Ball. An example of the written-spoken issue under discussion is Mariah Carey. She was apparently named after the song, "They Called the Wind Maria." Here from Wikipedia is an interesting tidbit of how the wind got its name: In George Rippey Stewart's 1941 novel Storm, he gives the storm which is the protagonist of his story the name "Maria".[18] In 1947, Stewart wrote a new introduction for a reprint of the book, and discussed the pronunciation of "Maria": "The soft Spanish pronunciation is fine for some heroines, but our Maria here is too big for any man to embrace and much too boisterous." He went on to say, "So put the accent on the second syllable, and pronounce it 'rye'".[19] The success of Stewart's novel was one factor that motivated U.S. military meteorologists to start the informal practice of giving women's names to storms in the Pacific during World War II. The practice became official in 1945. In 1953, a similar system of using women's names was adopted for North Atlantic storms. This continued until 1979, when men's names were incorporated into the system.[20] Although Stewart's novel is set in 1935, the novel and its impact on meteorology later inspired Lerner and Lowe to write a song for their play about the California gold rush, and like Stewart, they too gave a wind storm the name Maria, which is pronounced /məˈraɪ.ə/.[19] The lines throughout the song end in feminine rhymes mostly using the "long i" sound /aɪ/, echoing the stress pattern and vowel sound of the name Maria. Singer Mariah Carey was named after this song.[21][22] Presumably Ms. Carey's parents felt the 'h' would indicate the pronunciation they intended: M'RYE-ah. The novelist Stewart was correct in saying that the pronunciation M'REE-a is Spanish (and also other continental languages). M'RYE-a is not, however, Stewart's invention. It is the traditional English post-Great Vowel Shift pronunciation. And if you are reading Fielding's Tom Jones, the hero's ladylove is So-FYE-ah for the same reason.
Keren, Denzil/Denzel is Cornish, not Welsh. It is derived from a Cornish placename. Dashiell is a French surname, pronounced D'SHEEL, not English at all. I know two fellow English professors who named their sons Dashiell, partly in honor of Hamnett, but mostly IMO to get to the cute nickname Dash. In order to do that they switched from the Romance stress rule to the Germanic one: DASH'l. Not my cup of tea, but whatever. Barack, as in President Obama, is an Arabic name meaning 'blessed.' Its Hebrew cognate is Baruch, not Barak, which in Hebrew does mean 'lightning.' Thus weather names have no particular association with Barack. BTW a common vernacular name for Jewish boys named Baruch is Benedict/Bennett, also meaning 'blessed.' (In my generation the Baruchs tended to have Barry as their vernacular name, and I believe Barry was President Obama's schooldays nickname.)
To update my post of January 20, the male name that Raylan Givens suggests for the expected baby is Jiffypop, the female name as I noted before being Palmolive.
Sarah Smile: In English, two vowels or two consonants in a row are commonly blended together, so the punctuation [apostrophe] seems like the easiest way to prevent that. Beth the Original: there's Noel with an umlaut.... The traditional way in English of indicating that two adjacent vowels are pronounced in separate syllables is with a diaeresis: two dots placed over a vowel to mark a hiatus,"two adjacent vowels, not separated by a consonant or pause and not merged into a diphthong" (Wikipedia's wording). Thus, the traditonal way of spelling Zoe and Chloe is with a diaeresis (two dots) over the 'e'. Most people no longer bother with the diaeresis in Zoe, Chloe, or Noel for that matter. While both a diaeresis and an umlaut are two dots over a vowel, functionally they are very different. The umlaut changes the quality of the vowel. So the name Kathe with an umlaut over the 'a' is pronounced Kaytuh (the e is a schwa), while without the umlaut it would be pronounced Kahtuh ('ah' as in father). On another topic, I am a fan of Timothy Olyphant and thus a loyal viewer of Justified. In this past week's episode, Olyphant's character Raylan Givens and his ex-wife Winona are discussing names for their soon-to-be-born child. Winona is pushing for Felix, and Raylan nixes it. And then he suggests a couple of names. I forget the boy's name he suggests, but for a girl he mentions Palmolive, and they both agree that's definitely a girl's name. If someone else saw that episode, please refresh on Raylan's suggestion for a boy.
Chimu, the report is Blue Ivy Carter. If I recall, there are several celebrity offspring with Blue as a first or middle name, with Cher probably the first to use the name for her son Elijah Blue.
For those who haven't seen, Beyonce and Jay-Z's daughter Blue Ivy has arrived....
Looks like the members of the American Name Society concur with Laura W.: "...members of the American Name Society voted for their names of the year. For the Trade Name of the Year they chose Siri, the almost-human robot personal assistant of Apple's iPhone; the Place Name was Fukushima, the Personal Name Qadaffi (however you spell it), the Fictional Name Lisbeth Salander from Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy and the overall Name of the Year was Arab Spring." I gleaned this tidbit from the weekly newsletter World Wide Words (www.worldwidewords.org). For those of us who are wordies as well as namies, this is an interesting website and newsletter.
Zoerhenne, that's actually a hard question to answer. My son and daughter-in-law are still involved in legal proceedings, and so our little one is not yet adopted. An important legal decision went our way, and we're hoping the next (and final?) one will too. So at the moment his Legal name is the one his birth mom chose, and that one is Isr@31 J3r3m1@h (I have to be supercareful about what I write). Elliott is the name my son and daughter-in-law have chosen to be used when the adoption is final. Because the baby is called Isr@31 by his siblings (well, Izzy) and at his pre-school and other classes and activities that he attends, they may use that as his mn. His current surname is one which is also a given name (like Thomas or Lewis), so maybe they will use that. So basically his name is up in the air--actually he has too many names, and he isn't sure exactly what his name is, and neither is anyone else. We do call him Elliott, but most of the time we call him Muffin. I addressed all his Christmas, Hanukkah, and birthday presents to Muffin. Yes, he has three major gift-getting occasions in the space of a week--the house looks like his own personal Toys-R-Us. I personally am OK with Isr@31 as a mn. It was the name of my paternal grandfather's youngest brother, although I didn't know that until I looked up the Ellis Island records. We always called that uncle Eli. So it's a family name, as is Elliott, which is the French diminutive of my father's name Eliyahu (Elijah). My son Edward is named for my father who used Edward as his civil name--friends and acquaintances called him Ed. My grandparents, aunts, and uncle always called him Ellie, and my mother called him a nickname derived from our surname. I don't know if anything has been decided about the baby's surname. It has always been their intention to give children surnames chosen from among the various possibilities on the family trees, so they may choose something from my daughter-in-law's side. Her maternal grandfather is a person of some note who has been the subject of several books, documentaries, newspaper and magazine articles, lectures, and museum exhibitions, so maybe his name, but I don't know.
Zoerhenne, our darling little boy who will be two next week is Elliott. No one seems to have a problem with it--or if they do, they have (rightly) kept it to themselves.
Many years ago my sister went to school with a girl named Hollace, usually called Holly (naturally). I don't know if the spelling makes the name seem on the feminine side to me, or whether it's because this Hollace was the only one I ever met with any spelling of the name, but Hollis/Hollace does say 'girl' to me.
I thought this article from the Jewish Daily Forward might be of interest: http://www.forward.com/articles/147997/?p=1 Briefly it discusses the aftermath when the leader of the Lubavitch chassidic movement asked his followers to name their daughters after his deceased wife, Chaya Moussia, and they did--in droves. Both the article and the accompanying video are in English and do not require any special background to follow, well, as long as you can understand a Brooklyn accent.
pennyx, My mother's name was Sylvia Eleanor. If she were still with us, she would be 99 years old on Christmas. So perhaps it is time for a revival?
Lola is the traditional nickname for Dolores.
Laura Wattenberg cited in today's NYTimes: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/fashion/google-searches-help-parents-narrow-down-baby-names.html?ref=fashion
The -j- in Marjolein is pronounced like the -y- in yes. The =ei- is pronounced the same as it is in Kleine, part of your friend's nickname, that is roughly rhyming with the English 'train.' It is not pronounced like the -ei- in German as in fraulein (that is like the English word 'line'). I personally like Marjolein, but Americans would likely have to have the pronunciation explained.
fancynancy, Dahl is a family name. Fernando Lamas married Arlene Dahl. Their son Lorenzo Lamas is the father of Shayne Dahl Lamas. It's perfectly normal in US naming practice to use a family surname as a given name. I don't understand why you think Press isn't too crazy, but aren't sure about the common practice of using family surnames as given names.
From a poker-playing expectant father (and having nothing to do with Bob the Builder): "So my wife is pregnant and it's either a boy, or possibly a girl with a penis. We've been unable to come to any agreement on a male name. Here's where I want to enlist the help of TLDR. Names that I would like but my wife has shot down: Tesla, Akira, Kaneda Name that we would use if it was a dwarf (it is not, according to the ultrasound): Tyrion Girl name that my wife likes and I'm cool with: Keira Girl name that I am not cool with but my wife likes: Chloe Background information: I'm white, my wife is Chinese. It's looking like it got size from me (arms and legs are longer than normal - and I am 6'7"), and we both have abnormally wide shoulders, so he will likely be somewhat physically imposing. The last name is Nickolas, and we probably want to avoid alliteration. What we're looking for: names that sound a little exotic for the US, but not ridiculously ethnic. Chinese and Korean names are far too ethnic to not be absurd for a kid whose primary language is english, which is why I pulled a couple of my options from animes where the race of the characters is kind of up in the air. Anyhow, I'm looking for anything creative that we might overlook in our own research. I'm fine with pulling names from fantasies or science fiction (Tyrion and Akira, FFS), but want to avoid anything with strong religious overtones. There will be no Ezekiel, Joseph, Joshua, Buddha, or Muhammad. No Thor either. No Sven." The thread with the deliberately unhelpful responses from his fellow poker players: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/63/lounge-discussion-review/help-name-my-baby-1124699/ If anyone would care to make suggestions, I'll forward them to this dad-to-be.
The Dutch also says "he's as yellow as a cheese souffle."