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12th Feb: A new policy is being put in place for TRS threads: If there is no evidence provided in the Opening Post that the page is broken, the thread will be nuked immediately. See Everything You Wanted To Know About Changing Names for what constitutes evidence.
5th Feb: Echo Chamber Season 1 blooper reel on Youtube here
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It's the one group Static can never defeat: the Insufferable Y-Wymyn!
...not spelled like that.
"Well, I'm Brian, B-R-I-V-O-L-B-N-the number seven and the letter Q!"
This trope describes an intentionally bizarre or unusual (mis)spelling of one's name. It's generally done to make oneself stand out from the crowd without going to more ridiculous extremes.
This would not include traditional alternative spellings such as Jeff/Geoff or Terry/Terri/Teri, nor to simple foreign-language transliterations; the new spelling should be an obvious change from a generally-accepted way to spell it (it can, though, apply to foreign-language names which are respelled phonetically, such as "Antwan" [Antoine] or "Dontay" [Dante], although "Jeff" is one of these). Further, it doesn't often apply to surnames, as few surnames have a single, accepted spelling, but there are rare occurrences.
As a fictional trope, one would expect this to appear mostly in written works, for obvious reasons, but it can crop up in other media as well, especially if a Cloud Cuckoolander gets to pick the name. It's also Truth in Television, as hundreds of babies are given "unique" spellings of traditional names each year. To some extent, it is also not, as some countries have laws about what parents can call their children. In some of these countries, your name must indicate your sex.
Sometimes characters who are Not Quite Human have exotic names that are oddly similar to Real Life names as a result of a Fantasy Counterpart Culture.
It's worth noting that replacing random vowyls with the letter "y" is an extrymely commyn mythod of invokyng thys trope. As is taking a one-syllable worde and adding the letter "e". Or d'ropping in the oc'casion'l apostr'phe, usu'lly (but not al'ways) in place of a v'wel.
For added comedy value, this can lead to Psmith Psyndrome.
See also Hollywood Spelling, but note that if the alternate spelling is considered bizarre in-show, Hollywood Spelling may be deliberately avoided.
Contrast Spell My Name with an S, where the misspelling is unintentional. (If it's a variation on a foreign name, though, they can coexist.) Spelling of something other than a name by the writer is probably Phantasy Spelling.
Compare Xtreme Kool Letterz, It Is Pronounced Tro-PAY, and Translation: Yes in the case of unpronounceable names.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- FLCL is always written as FLCL and always pronounced "fooly-cooly".
- Except the cases when it is pronounced "foory-koory" in the original anime and in Russian anime circles.
- Likewise, XXX Holic is pronounced "Holic".
- Nrvnqsr Chaos from Tsukihime. Even though "Nr" could be read as "Ner", this troper finds it really really hard to think of "vnqsr" as "on". Particularly startling since the first time you see it, it is in its own page, "Nrvnqsr? |>". And no one explains how to pronounce it.
- Keiichi from Ah! My Goddess. When he writes letters or notes, he signs his name as "K1". "K" sounds the same as kei, the first syllable of his name, and in Japanese the word for "1" is ichi. Not to be confused with That Ecchi.
- Rena of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni's name is "Reina". She took out the "i" because she thought it removed her bad memories. This has become a meme in the western fandom, due to the fact that she just took out the "i" but it make makes sense in Japanese.
- Dwun from Hunter × Hunter used to spell his name "Wdwune" until Ging changed it. Legally. In less than a minute.
- Digimon Xros Wars the sixth season of the franchise is actually pronounced "Cross Wars".
- Kyubey's name is written rather strangely in Japanese. Half in katakana, half in hiragana. It also uses small sized katakana, which is unusual. Naturally, this leads to a lot of Spell My Name with an S.
Comic Books
- The Dark Age of Supernames is notorious for doing this, with characters like Grimm, Stryfe and so on. Most of them created by Rob Liefeld.
- Jack Kirby engaged in this quite a bit, with Apokolips, Darkseid, Desaad, Izaya, Ikaris, Sersi, Thena, Virman Vundabar...
- Agent ! from Doom Patrol. Someone asks how to pronounce it, and is told, "It's easy, just '!'"
- Thompson and Thomson from Tintin, who usually identify themselves on the phone as "This is Thomson without a P" or "This is Thompson with a P". (In the original French, they were Dupont et Dupond.)
- Thompson usually used something along the lines of "This is Thompson with a P, as in Philadelphia/psychology/phone/something else with a silent P", while Thomson used "This is Thomson without a P, as in Venezuela".
- Static had to deal with a trio of truly invincible foes - Bryttyni, Tyffyni, and Krystyn, aka The Insufferable Y-Wymyn! (OK, so they were just "the popular girls" at his school, but they really were insufferable!) *
Static #8 Amusingly, in the same issue, Virgil also meets a young superhuman named "Funyl," but does not remark on that name.
Commercials
- A Mexican ad for DHL shows a 100% Mexican artist called María Chantal; however, since True Art Is Foreign, she went by the pen name of "Marie Chantale", and her commissions suddenly skyrocketed.
Fan Fiction
- Fan Fiction writers are infamous for doing this to their Mary Sues.
- An unusual non-Mary Sue example. The names of the various navy ships in Life Of The Legendaries are warped spellings of Pokémon names
- Aircraft carrier - UNV Sazandra (Sazandora)
- Gun cruiser - UNV Shandara (Shandera)
- Destroyer - HNS Gardvior (Gardevoir)
- Battleship - HNS Craydaunt (Crawdaunt)
- Missile cruiser - SCNV Saedra (Seadra)
- Attack submarine - SCNV Draconite (Dragonite)
Film
- Animal Crackers:
Cpt. Spaulding (Groucho Marx): My name is Jeffrey T. Spaulding, and I bet you can't guess what the T stands for. Mr. Chandler: Uh, Thomas? Cpt. Spaulding: Edgar. You were close, though. You were close, and you still are, I'll bet.
- In Bandslam, Vanessa Hudgens' character's name is "Sa5m", but "the 5 is silent".
- Ballistic: Ecks Vs. Sever.
- The epitome of this trope would have to be Jessica Lange's character from the 1970s remake of King Kong. A large chunk of dialogue is spent to establish that "Dwan" altered the spelling of her name specifically "to make it memorable".
- In LA Story, Steve Martin's character is charmed by a young woman who initially strikes him as down to earth. He's relieved to find her name is "Sandy", because, you know, he expected something weird. Turns out it's spelled "SAnDeE* " (yes, including the asterisk, and case sensitive).
- In Mean Girls the main character's name is spelled Cady, pronounced like Katie, but several people pronounce it Caddy. (Or rather, perhaps, like "catty," as this pun would make sense and might well have been intended.) At one point the principal, Mr. Duvall, comments that he has a nephew named Anfernee who gets mad when called Anthony. Almost as mad as Mr. Duvall gets when he thinks about the fact that his sister named him Anfernee.
- That Thing You Do!: The band originally called them selves the Oneders — meant like "One-ders", but everyone read it as "O-nee-ders". When they got a manager, they changed their name to the Wonders: "As in, I wonder what happened to the O-nee-ders."
- In Warlock (1989), the female hero is named Kassandra. She says that it's "Kassandra with a K" and the male hero calls her that when speaking to her.
- Couples Retreat: "Hello, my name is Sctanley... spelled with a C."
- The protagonist in Defendor (named, well, Defendor) goes berserk if you spell his name with "-er".
- In The Other Guys we get to meet the evil ex Christinith.
- At the beginning of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Harry says, "Now that I live in LA, I go to parties, you know the kind: where a girl whose name is Jill spells it G-Y-L-L-E, that bullshit."
Literature
- In Anne of Green Gables, Anne hates it when someone spells her name, "Ann" and refers to herself as "Anne-spelled-with-an-e", which becomes both a taunt and an affectionate nickname.
- Just about every single name in David Weber's Safehold books, meant to represent the shift in pronunciation that would occur after 800-1000 years. Common changes are replacing "j" with a "zh" and use of vowel groups such as "ah" and "ay" instead of other vowels (except "i" which is replaced with "y"), such as antagonist Zhaspahr Clyntahn (Jasper Clinton). This is combines with a healthy dose of Xtreme Kool Letterz, such as Charlz instead of Charles.
- Inverted in Larry Niven's novel ARM, where protagonist Gil Hamilton speculates that "Ecks", the last name of one of the people he interviews while investigating a murder, may have back-formed from a 20th-Century ancestor who changed his name to "X" (as Malcolm X did).
- Robert Jordan used this on occasion, with Elayne (Elaine) and Logain (Logan) being the most obvious normal names with single letters replaced or added. The most prominent concentration of such names is near the beginning of The Fires of Heaven, ranging from unconventional ("Maigan" for Megan) to plain odd ("Caralin" for Caroline and "Joni" for Johnny).
- Piers Anthony's Bio of a Space Tyrant has a character named "Shelia", whose name was misspelled on her birth certificate.
- Alfred Bester's (1953) The Demolished Man uses a sort of Text speak version of surnames: @kins (Atkins) 1/4maine (Quartermaine), etc.
- It was written that way as a text representation of Rebus Bubbles in a telepathic society.
- The Discworld novel Thud! has Nobby going out with a girl named Tawneee. Three "e"s. Also, Tawneee has a friend called Broccolee (originally Candee, but changed it after she heard that broccoli is healthier).
- In the same book there is Mr. A. E. Pessimal, whose name is A. E. "You mean you weren't named, just initialled?" asks Vimes.
- Then there's Magrat Garlick, the original third member of the Lancre witches, who was supposed to be named "Margaret" but got sideswiped by an illiterate baptism.
- She attempted to avoid this fate for her daughter, but thanks to a too-literal reading of her instructions by the priest officiating at the ceremony, the poor child ended up with the name "Esmerelda Margaret Note Spelling of Lancre".
- Priests in the Ramtops seem to do this a lot. Just ask James What The Hell's That Cow Doing In Here Poorchick, or the former King My God He's Heavy The First.
- Also, of course, the point of "Keli" (Princess Kelirehenna III of Sto Lat, better known as "kelly").
- In Wintersmith, we learn that Roland's last name is Chumsfanleigh. A footnote tells us that it's "Pronounced Chuffley" and that "it wasn't his fault".
- In Unseen Academicals, the
necromancer post-mortem communicator Dr Hicks spells his name "Hix", because no self respecting evil wizard would pass up a chance to have an x in his name.
- The Face On the Milk Carton begins with protagonist Jane Johnson experimenting with signing her name "Jayyne Jonstone." Then the other names show up, provoking a case of Be Careful What You Wish For...
- Grantaire in LesMiserables sometimes signs with a capital R, which in French (grand R) sounds like "Grantaire."
- Margaret Weis did this with the leader of her mercenary team Mag Force 7, which was simultaneously both homage to and ripoff of The Magnificent Seven. Most of the directly-patterned characters died before the team got their own line of novels; by that time, the only two direct Expies left were pilot Harry Luck and cyborg team leader "Xris".
- Captain Midnite, the highwayman hero of Midnite: The Story Of A Wild Colonial Boy. His Deadpan Snarker Siamese sidekick claimed misspelled names were more Bad Ass.
- The young adult novel entitled My Name is Su5san Smith. The 5 is Silent.
- William Gibson's Neuromancer features the antagonist Lady 3Jane Marie-France Tessier-Ashpool. It is not mentioned whether the "3" is silent.
- P. G. Wodehouse liked this trope, perhaps because his name is pronounced "wood-house", not "woad-house".
- In a rare surname example, Rupert (or Ronald) Psmith. The P is silent, "as in pshrimp", but he can tell if he's being called "Smith", and will correct people. In his first book, Psmith admits that he deliberately changed his name because "Smith" is too common.
- A short story features a baronet called Sir Jasper ffinch-ffarowmere, who could hear you say "Finch-Farrowmere". The "two small fs" thing actually occurs in Real Life.
- In Indiscretions Of Archie, Archie's last name, Moffam, is pronounced "Moom". To rhyme with Bloffingham.
- Thre's also Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge, whose middle name is pronounced "Fanshawe".
- The Ross O Carroll Kelly novels have many, many female characters whose parents have given them affected unique forenames; Ross even refers to them as "Jayne with a Y", "Keera with two E's", "Erika with a K"...
- In The Silence of the Lambs, the murderer insists he be addressed as "Jame". That's what's on the birth certificate, and no matter how much friends and family point out that "James" was the obvious intention, IT IS JAME.
- Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash has a character named "Da5id," apparently replacing the V with the number associated with its Roman numeral. It's likely a hacker handle.
- A confusing example: Isaac Asimov's short story "Spell My Name With An S" features a scientist, Marshall Zebatinsky, who decides on the advice of a numerologist to spell his last name "Sebatinsky". The story is the Trope Namer of the Spell My Name with an S trope, but it's an example of this trope.
- Asimov did another story, "Unto The Fourth Generation", that touches on this tangentially: a man goes through an entire day seeing variant spellings of the name Levkovich everywhere he goes; it turns out to be the spirit of a dead ancestor by that name, making an (ultimately successful) attempt to contact him.
- The Thrawn Trilogy from the Star Wars Expanded Universe gives us the evil clones Joruus C'baoth and Luuke Skywalker (cloned from Jedi Master Jorus C'baoth and Luke Skywalker, respectively). Although the spelling of these names is not called into question (because the characters never had to spell them), the "telltale mispronunciation" was mentioned as a sign that these were indeed clones. Of course, since this is Timothy Zahn we're talking about, there's a pun involved too: It's not just a mispronunciation; since both clones characters have the letter U in their names, the clone is Another U. (One wonders what C'baoth would've named the clone of Mara Jade he intended to create. "Maura"? "Maara"?)
- At least it wasn't Entoo Nee or Ebanne Q3 Baobab, who got mistaken for droids all the time. Even though they didn't actually look a thing like droids.
- No other clones, not even the "Devist family" and Tierce from the Hand Of Thrawn duology, written by the same author, distort their names like that. Maybe it's a Joruus thing, or maybe because these new ones were desperate to keep anyone from knowing that they were clones, and the Devists were all furiously working to avert Which Me? by being as individual as was practical.
- The same author uses this trope as a way to slip in very normal (at least pronounciation-wise), Earth-sounding names such as Jacen, Jorj, Billey, and Odonnl.
- Winnie the Pooh has this a lot. Owl and Eeyore believe that the former's name is spelled "Wol", Tigger spells his name "T - I - Double Guh - err".
- To a lesser extent, in the Disney Adaptations, Rabbit's garden is labeled. Incorrectly. "Carrots" is spelled "Karets", for example.
- In "The New Adventures of Winnie The Pooh", and every movie where Tigger has a house, the sign (New Adventures) and mailbox(Tigger Movie) has him spelled as "Tigr".
- A Song of Ice and Fire, as part of it's medieval setting, likes to vary in name spellings: Joffrey, Kevan, Jaime, Lysa, Jeyne, Margaery, Petyr... and that's not including all the variations on single names (Eddard, Edmure, Edric, etc).
- Also done in the medieval setting of the Deryn novels: King Brion (Brian) Haldane, Lord Seisyll (Cecil) Arilan.
- The Legends Of Laconia character Cassiopoeia insists on the nickname "Cassi", without the "e". Hypocritical Humor because her brother Ferdinand is irritated when she calls him "Ferdy", which she does constantly; it's even become his Fan Nickname.
- Justified in the Safehold series as the result of 800 years of language drift - Cayleb (Caleb), Maikel (Michael), Sharleyan (Charlene), Zhaspyr (Jasper).
- Rebekkah from Graveminder.
Live Action TV
- Cheers.
Candi: My name is Candi.
Frasier: (noticing her necklace) Yes, I see. With an "I".
Candi: Yeah, I used to spell it with a "Y", but I wanted to be taken seriously, so I spell it with an "I", like 'Gandhi'.
Frasier: Yes... I believe that's why he changed it, too.
- A memorable A Bit of Fry and Laurie sketch involved a character named Derek giving a report to a policeman. When asked to give his full name, he says "Derek" and then drops a cigarette lighter on the table. When asked to spell the name, he says " N I P P L hyphen E." Further hilarity ensues as his address involves a tap dance and a slap to a cheek.
- Season 12 of The Amazing Race featured a team of two Goths by the names of Kynt and Vyxsin. Season 15 had the couple of Meghan & Cheyne (pronunced "Shane"). Season 16 had Caite (pronounced "Katie", not "Kate").
- Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report has been known to accuse Jon Stewart of this, adding an H to make it "John" because "that is how you are supposed to spell that." (Of course, it's short for "Jonathan" and so is perfectly valid.)
- John Stewart is also the name of a Green Lantern character, and he may want to avoid that. Note that "Stewart" is his middle name — his last name is actually Leibowitz, which he dropped for showbiz. In fact, his middle name was originally spelled "Stuart", giving his new name a double dose of this trope.
- More precisely, his actual last name is Stewart, as he had it legally changed along with his wife at the time of their wedding. And the reason was not (only) showbiz, but a bad relationship with his father.
- Colbert himself is also an example — "It's French, bitch!"
- Even moreso because the actor's name is actually pronounced as written; his anchor/reporter/pundit character has the same spelling but a different pronunciation.
- Not quite. Colbert pronounces it without the T in real life as well. He grew up pronouncing it the way it's written and decided to change it when he went to college (along with dropping his southern accent.) The rest of his family still pronounces it as written.
- In the episode "Bad Wolf" in Doctor Who, the character Lynda clarifies that her name is spelled with a Y, not an I. Subsequently, the Doctor calls her "Lynda with a Y."
- Later in the two-parter "Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks", a showgirl named Tallulah explains that her name is spelled "with three l's and an h". When she later asks the Doctor if he can save her fiance's life, the Doctor answers, "Oh, Tallulah with three L's and an H—just you watch me!"
- Eerie, Indiana: The main character's sister also spelled her name "Syndi".
- In Family Matters, Lieutenant Murtaugh asks Rachel to call him Lou, spelled "L-i-e-u."
- He also reveals to Carl that he had his first name legally changed to "Lieutenant" when he became a lieutenant. When asked what his name was before that, he says, "Sergeant."
- Jayne... The man they call Jayne Cobb of Firefly.
- Somewhat parodied with Izaak Wolfe in Gap.
- In the Sci-Fi Dom Com Meego, the lead gave his name as "P, L, X, a circle with four lines through it, and a triangle the size of my head." It's pronounced "Smith". One scene has him make out a cheque to the ice-cream man, signing his name, then putting "(triangle not drawn to scale)".
- In the opening spot of one episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, Tom Servo announces he's decided to change the spelling of his name to Htom Sirveaux. Crow's response: "Well, Htom, why don't you hlick me?" After the commercial break, we see Crow deciding to change the spelling of his name to Cröe.
- Kari Byron from MythBusters pronounces her first name "Carrie".
- Going over the various ways to spell that pronunciation (Keri, Kari, Kary, Cari, etc.) would need its own page. There's at least 11 (quite possibly more).
- On NCIS, Abby's stalker ex-boyfriend's name is Mikel Mowher. It's pronounced "Michael M-ow-ur."
- Fred Sanford. spells his name "S-A-N-F-O-R-D Period."
- Parodied on Saturday Night Live on occasion:
- In one sketch, Jamie Foxx played a kid on a talent show. His name was spelled Q-U-E-V-Y-N-N-N, and pronounced like "Kevin".
- In another sketch, Betty White played a woman whose name is pronounced as "Blarfengahr Blarfengahr" and written as "Lee Smith".
- Subverted in an episode of the Sitcom Wings, in which a visiting socialite has a romantic fling with "Brian With An 'I'."
- When Monty Brown joined the WWE, he was given the stage name Marquis Cor Von ("Marquis" pronounced "Marcus", not "Marquee" as one might expect). That lasted all of about a week; the next week, he was Marcus Cor Von.
- Nathan Barley features the individual 15 Peter 20.
- Not to forget Jonatton Yeah?
- In an episode of Flight of the Conchords, the main characters argue over the the name of their new love interest, one saying it's Barbara and the other "Brahbrah" (to which the first replies that no one is named "Brahbrah"). At the end of the episode, "Brahbrah" is indeed revealed to be her name.
- Aoife and her brother Krtnqz from The Vicar of Dibley.
- Aoife is a perfectly normal Irish name. Krtnqz, er, not so much.
- Audrey fforbes-Hamilton in To The Manor Born insists on the two small fs. In one episode she is puzzled as to how a journalist managed to get the fs into "Hamilton".
- In the Red Dwarf episode about time slides, there is a model named "Mulholland-JuhJones". Presumably she insists on spelling "Jones" with two small js.
- Seeeeemji. The 'J' is silent.
- Don Draper's self-proclaimed rival, Ted Chaough (pronounced "Shaw") starting in Season 4 of Mad Men.
Roger Sterling: Hey, writers, how many extra vowels is that?
- The Young Ones Vyvyan, Vyvyan, Vyvyan!!!!
- Played for laughs (and Turned Up to Eleven in the process as usual) Monty Python's Flying Circus features Mr. Raymond Luxury-Yacht, which is pronounced "Throatwobbler-Mangrove." Looking at the British examples under Real Life below, one can see where they got the idea.
- At least one article has mentioned how the professionals on Dancing with the Stars, especially the likes of Edyta, Ashly, Kym, Dmitry, and Maksim, seem to have a dislike of vowels.
- Quendra on Community.
- The Odd Couple: Oscar's secretary Myrna briefly goes with a man named Sheldn - there was a misspelling on his birth certificate.
Music
- One common "joke" (referenced in, and possibly stemming from The Simpsons) consists of asking a someone to spell AC/DC. Their answer will invariable be "Ay, see, dee, see," or, if they're particularly clever and wary "Ay, see, slash, dee, see." Both of these answers, are, of course, wrong, since it's spelled with a lightning bolt, not a slash.
- Inverted with
Louis Luigi Ludwig van Beethoven, who signed his works in the language of his target audience.
- And
Georg Friedrich Händel George Frederik Handel. Actually pretty common among well-travelled artists pre modern era. (John Bach?)
- Owen from The Birthday Massacre used to spell it O-en because he wanted a nickname that wasn't 'Waffles'.
- Marillion's song "Kayleigh" was named after lead singer Fish (Derek Dick)'s ex-girlfriend Kay Lee. The song was such a hit (at least in the UK) that parents started naming their daughters Kayleigh in Real Life.
- Viktor Vaughn, a character adopted by Daniel Dumile (MF DOOM) on his album Vaudeville Villain. As he says in the song G.M.C, "Party people know the name: Vik with a 'K', if it's all the same."
- The lead singer "Nic." in the Swedish band "Nic. and the family" pronounces his name "Nick dot".
- A HUGE number of rappers and hip-hop artists use stage names with unusual spellings. There's actually a very good reason for this: such names are much easier to defend as trademarks.
- This is a trend in the hard rock/metal genre: Led Zeppelin, Def Leppard, Mötley Crüe, Lynyrd Skynyrd, etc.
- Although in Led Zeppelin's case this was to avoid people mistakenly pronouncing the word "Lead" like "Leed"
- Bob Geldof's "Attitude Chicken" features a girlfriend, name of...Ahknne?
Yes, my girlfriend's name is Anne, but she says the K is silent
Put the H after the A or she gets really violent
- The avant-gard gospel ensemble The Danielson Famile.
- The first word in metal band Machinae Supremacy's name is apparently pronounced like "machine".
- Halestorm's lead singer is Elizabeth "Lzzy" Hale.
- There is a group called "!!!" (it's pronounced "chk chk chk").
- The band Sunn O))) pronounces their name "Sunn".
- In one of his radio shows, Professor Peter Schickele mentions a friend who spells his name Hen3ry. "The three is silent."
- The joke about "Hen3ry" is more famously associated with Tom Lehrer.
- The Christian rock band White Heart had a running gag in their album credits in which subsequent albums spelled lead singer Rick Florian's first name as Ric, Rikk, Riq, Ricke, Rhic, Rikcq, Ricque, etc.
Newspaper Comics
- Lampshaded in Bloom County when Binkley meets his dad's significantly younger new girlfriend:
"Hi. I'm Stormee, with two 'e's."
"And I'm appalled, with two 'p's."
Radio Drama
Real Life
- Too many examples to keep faith in humanity pop up everyday in "bad baby names" discussion communities.
- A New Zealand couple actually had their name denied by the court. They wanted name their child "4real" — yes, with a numeral 4. Apparently the baby was named "Superman" instead.
- A Chinese couple named their son @. Pronounced "at". In Chinese the symbol can be construed as a Meaningful Name, since "@" is pronounced as "Ai Ta" in Chinese, which, when said with the correct tones, means "Love Him".
- This website has an interesting collection of names people have thought up for their children, as does the Utah Baby Namer, described as An online help for parents looking for that distinctive name that says "I'm a Utah Mormon!" (Antrim Zeezrom. Phakelikaydenicia. Friends Forsaken. NaLa'DeLuhRay. Zion Anakin. Vyquetoriya Walkasheaqua.)
- In England there are two neighbouring towns named Tonbridge and Tunbridge Wells.
- Do not forget Tandridge, to make matters worse.
- Haverfordwest, in Wales. What is it west of? Hereford (in England). Evidently the names used to be more similar. (Also, the Welsh alphabet is pronounced differently to the English one — eg F sounds like V and DD and LL are distinct sounds to D and L.)
- The Welsh spelling is Hwlffordd — note the absence of "west" or equivalent — which is pronounced more like (apologies to Welsh speakers) "howl forth".
- The town of Whitley changed its name to Whitley Bay when coffins kept being sent to Whitby instead.
- Not all that uncommon in Britain for older place names, where divergence over centuries of linguistic drift occurred between regions before spellings became permanent. Even then, the real pronunciation can be very counterintuitive — "-cester", if it follows a vowel (or an "r"), is pronounced "-ster" (and can lead to variant spellings when the name is exported, such as Wooster for Worcester). Counterexamples include Cirencester (because "-cester" is preceded by a consonant, it is pronounced "siren-sester").
- Ditto Towcester: "toaster".
- Bicester ("Bister") anyone?
- The winner: "Ratlinghope" in Shropshire it's pronounced "Ratchup"
- There's a late contender from North Yorkshire in the name of Appletreewick (pronounced "Aptrick").
- Belvoir Castle in Lincolnshire, pronounced 'beaver'. Milngavie in Glasgow, pronounced Mulgye. And the best of the lot: the surname Featherstonehaugh, pronounced Fanshaw.
- Magdalen College, Oxford, is pronounced "Maudlin". Ditto Magdalene College, Cambridge.
- England also boasts some surnames with magnificently peculiar spellings. The most famous is probably "Mannering" (as in the Captain in Dad's Army), which is spelled Mainwaring; but there's also "Marshbanks", spelled Marjoriebanks, "Sinjen", spelled St John, "Chumley", spelled Cholmondley, and "Fanshaw", spelled Featherstonehaugh. No, seriously.
- Lucky us, St. Clair has its sounded-out variant, Sinclair.
- Ireland's placenames can often be baffling, due to a mixture of the Irish language (a Celtic tongue only very distantly related to English) and the dodgy spelling of Cromwellian surveyors. So Nenagh is pronounced "neena", Portlaoise as "port leesh[a]", Naas rhymes with "place", Thurles is "thurless" (not "thurlz"), Celbridge has a soft C, Leixlip is "leek-slip", Maynooth is "m'nooth", Tuam is "choo-um", Dún Laoghaire is "dunleery", Daingean is "dang-gun" and Birr is "burr".
- The town of Slaithwaite in South Yorkshire is always pronounced (by people in the know at least) as Slawit and to do otherwise is considered incorrect by locals.
- In North America, this is true of names derived from Amerindian languages or tribes. How many of you would pronounce Cheyenne "Shy-Ann", Ute "Yoot", or Sioux "Sue" if you did not already know?
- Actually, 'Sioux' is French. The Sioux call themselves Dakota/Lakota or other more easily pronounced names.
- Also in North America — Worcester, Massachusetts. Prounounced "Wuss-ter", accent on the first syllable. It's pronounced the same as its namesake, then. Not just a North American thing. Similarly, Leicester (LESS-ter).
- With the local accent it sounds like "Wuss-tah".
- For that matter, Massachusetts.
- And let's not forget the gems of Acushnet, Ashburnham, Chelmsford, Dunstable, Gloucester, Holyoke, Leominster, Mattapoisett, Methuen, Needham, Pepperell, Provincetown, Quincy, Somerville, Tewksbury, Wilbraham, and Yarmouth. Gloucester in particular has souvenir shops with items that say "Glosta," reflecting the pronunciation when spoken by someone with a New England accent. See also How To Pronounce Names In Massachusetts.
- Then there is also Haverhill in Massachusetts. No, it's not 'haver hill' it's 'hav roll' (or something like that).
- The random mixing of settlers in Philadelphia has resulted in words like Bala Cynwyd, Schwenksville, Wissahickon, Conshohocken and Schuylkill. This troper has lived in the Philadelphia area her whole life and still has to look Schuylkill up every single time.
- "SKY-kill", right?
- No, SKOO-kull.
- Then there is Cairo. In Illinois it is Kay-row, in New York it is Care-row. The more obvious "Kai-row" is not used for either.
- Another Illinois example is the town of San Jose. It is pronounced "San Joes", NOT "San Hosay".
- A Wisconsin city called New Berlin used to be pronounced just like the city in Germany that it was named after. However, during WWII the residents did not want their city to be associated with Those Wacky Nazis and "renamed" the city by altering the pronunciation. It is now pronounced with the accent on the first syllable of Berlin /nuːˈbɜrlɨn/, rather than on the second and slurred together as one word.
- Also in Ohio: Delhi, pronounced "DELL-high."
- Possibly Ohio's (perhaps the entire country's) worst: Versailles, pronounced "ver-SAILS".
- Also Marseilles and Bourbonnais, IL (recently changed by legislation to burr-bə-NAY)
- Similarly, there are a number of cities named "Moscow" (Mos-CO) and "Cuba" (KOO-ba) etc. in the Midwest.
- There's a city in Texas called Houston (HUES-ton) and a street in New York called Houston (HOUSE-ton). DO NOT confuse the two.
- There is a road in Houston called Kuykendall - pronounced KIRK-in-doll.
- Arkansas, anyone? The question of how to correctly say the state's name caused so much confusion that the state legislature was forced to step in and officially recognize the -saw pronunciation.
- The Arkansas one is ever better because over in Kansas there's the Arkansas River. Pronounced Are-Kansas. With both S's.
- Which is the same river that runs through Colorado, Oklahoma and Arkansas (of course). But it's pronounced this way only in Kansas.
- In Missouri, there are the cities of Nevada (Pronounced Nuh-VAY-Duh), and Versailles (Pronounced Ver-SAILS).
- In Oklahoma, it's my-AM-uh, not MY-am-me (Miami).
- In New York state, it's MAY-drid, not MAH-drid (Madrid.)
- In Louisiana, the process of watching newcomers to the state struggling to pronounce the various French and French-influenced names of cities and streets is almost a sport, but the twin jewels in that collection are Natchitoches (NAK-a-tish) and Nacogdoches (nak-uh-DOH-chess), sister cities in Louisiana and Texas respectively.
- Don't forget Tchoupitoulas (Chop-a-TOO-las), the cardinal street in New Orleans.
- In Arizona, it starts with Tempe (not derived from Spanish: name for the Vale of Tempe in Greece, and pronounced TEM-pee, not tem-PAY, opposing itself to the Greek pronunciation) and Prescott (Presskit, not Press-cott), and goes downhill from there, through Tucson (TOO-sawn — but think TUCK-sun and you'll have the right spelling), the Mogollon Plateau (Muggy-OWN, not Magowlin, M'Gollun, or Mongolian), Canyon de Chelly (d'SHAY), Casa Grande (counterintuitively pronounced CASS-uh GRAND), and finally reaching the closest community to the Four Corners, Teec Nos Pos, which is still under discussion.
- The cities of Newark, New Jersey, and Newark, Delaware. The Delaware city is pronounced like it looks— "new ark", but the New Jersey version is prounced like a sort of two-syllable version of "nerk".
- This is also true of Newark, Ohio, which the locals jokingly refer to as "Nerk, Ahia", although I'm not familiar with anybody who actually pronounces Ohio that way.
- Michigan, particularly Detroit, is full of these (even "Detroit" itself is a mispronunciation of the French), frequently because of French or Anishnabeg names having been mangled by English-speakers. For example, while "Detroit" is pronounced "dee-TROYT" (or, depending on what neighborhood you're from, "DEE-troyt"), Gratiot is...GRASH-ot. It's about fifty-fifty whether a French place name in Michigan is pronounced the French way or phonetically to an Anglophone, and there is no rhyme or reason to figuring out which.
- Actually, neither are pronounced the French way : Detroit (written Détroit by them Frenchies, by the way) should be pronounced deh-trwa, and Gratiot grass-yo (without taking in account that the "r" and "e" are different sounds in French).
- In this troper hometown (Westland, Michigan), there's a street named after London's Thames River (pronounced "temz"). The street is pronounced, of course, "thaymz".
- In Southern California (and likely in other places in the south) many streets and cities have Spanish-derived names. Tourists not familiar with Spanish orthography might ask how to get from La Cienega (La si-EH-nih-gah) to Cahuenga Boulevard (kuh-WAYN-guh) by asking for see-uh-NAY-guh and kuh-hyoon-ga. Or, they might want to spend a weekend in La Jolla (La Hoy-yuh). There are also a lot of streets with Calle in the name, which this troper has heard pronounced Kal-leh instead of the more-correct kai-yeh.
- There's a town in the Blue Hills of Virgina called Buena Vista which the locals insist is pronounced "Bew-nuh Vista".
- Politicians have been known to add one or more "a"s to the beginning of their last names so that they might end up at the top of the ballot. Some places have taken to listing names out of order deliberately to prevent this.
- Some Hispanic names are a victim of this. Since Spanish has several homophones that are the nightmare of those who ain't good at spelling, it's not uncommon to see people with the same name spelled differently. For example, we have Jimena, Ximena and Gimena, Javier and Xavier, as well as Cortés and Cortez. (The accent on the last one is because accents in Spanish are placed according to an incredibly convoluted set of rules).
- While this may be true, in English, the word would be spelled "Cortes," despite having the accent in native language. In English, accents aren't used, and are just dropped. This is common with French loanwords and words with a French origin.
- You can still see some diacritics used appropriately in some places; naïve and mêlée pop to mind.
- A Spanish word that ends in a consonant other than n or s is accented on the last syllable. Otherwise the accent is on the next to last. A written accent overrides these default rules. That may be too much to ask anyone to remember, but at least it is a rule.
- Done often by musicians and musical groups to make them stand out (Jackyl, Yung Joc, Lynyrd Skynyrd, etc.)
- Remarked upon by Strong Bad when he was asked to supply ideas for band names.
Strong Bad: ...take a really cool word but then spell it all wrong. You know, like Lazor or Bigg Nife, or something like Taranchula, or maybe something like Limozeen...
- Incidentally, Lynyrd Skynyrd was named after Leonard Skinner, the band's gym teacher at school who informed them that they would never amount to anything.
- Parodied by
Curt Kurt Kurdt Cobain.
- In Japan, substituting "C"s for "K"s is fairly common, for example, singers Asuca Hayashi and Shihoco Hirata, and manga artist Moyoco Anno.
- Occurs often with Brazilian exported artists, such as musician Morris Albert (Maurício Alberto), and artists Luke Ross (Luciano Queiroz) and Ed Benes (José Edilbenes Bezerra).
- Some names have been corrupted by these alternate spellings to the point that the original spelling is no longer dominant, or has been forgotten entirely. Look what That Other Wiki has for spellings of Ashley: Ashley, Ashleigh, Ashlee, Ashly, Ashlie, Ashli, Ashlea, Ashlye, and Ashlei. They will all be angry if you misspell their names.
- The original spelling is Ashley, from old English "ash" (from the name of the tree) and "ley" (meaning "clearing" — compare to the old English "lee" which mans "meadow"). "Leigh" is a variant of "Lee" and therefore only indirectly related to "-ley".
- While the Old English probably thought it meant that, Ashley is probably a corruption of Aisling in Gaelic.
- Similarly, Kayleigh/Kayley/Cayley/etc. is only an elaboration of the name Kay/Kaye. The Irish name it supposedly derives from (Caoladhe) is properly anglicized as Keely.
- And while the alternate Irish origin, céilidh, (which is actually a Scottish word) could conceivably yield the name Kayley/Cayley/etc., it can't really be argued that the name was traditionally derived from it, being that céilidh is a common noun — a bit like naming your child "barn dance" (and not "fairy dance" or "fairy circle" as it's often translated).
- There are many, MANY ways to spell Caitlin, which is actually derived from Catherine/Katherine/Katharine.
- Yoshitoshi ABe of Haibane Renmei fame insist on spelling his given name with capital 'A' and 'B', when written in Romaji.
- Author Dafydd ab Hugh (that's dah-veth). Who is American: Dafydd is a perfectly normal name - but only if you are Welsh. The 'ab Hugh' part would be considered excessive even by Welsh people.
- Siobhan (approximately Shuh-Varn) or author Chuck Palahniuk (Chuck Paulanick)
- Aline's brother is, indeed, Alex, not nickname. Her family is full of naming issues.
- Australian author Max Barry (who later went to write Jennifer Government and Syrup) published his first book as Maxx Barry, in parody of the earlier mentioned Siimon Reynolds, but the joke was mostly lost.
- Sometime fanfic author Brian Bikowicz legally changed his name to Megazone.
- Ettore Boiardi marketed his foods under the brand name "Chef Boy-Ar-Dee" (now "Boyardee", without the dashes) so American consumers could correctly pronounce his surname.
- Although it's still not technically correct — the original surname would be pronounced boy-AR-dee, not boy-ar-DEE.
- A couple of parents in Sweden tried to name their child Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116. It's pronounced "Albin". When that failed, they tried to name him "a". Also pronounced Albin.
- There's a reason why Meg Cabot doesn't write under her full name: according to one copyright page, it isn't Megan, it's Meggin.
- TV producer and writer Stephen J. Cannell ("CAN-el")
- Mariah Carey was reportedly given the spelling of her first name so that people would pronounce it exactly how "Maria" used to be pronounced, since her parents are a big fan of the song "They Call the Wind Maria"
- Which really is more like "Moriah" according to how my choir performed a different song with the same theme.
- For a time in the 1960s, pop singer Cher spelled her name with an accent mark: Chér. Because, well, "Cher" (short for Cherilyn) is itself such an unbelievably common moniker, right? Of course, in the original French, it's "cher" (masculine) and "chère" (feminine) ("my dear" or "expensive")
- Science Fiction author C. J. Cherryh added the h to the end of her surname because her first editor felt that "Cherry" sounded too much like a romance novel writer. Similarly, she went by her initials to initially mask the fact that she was female in a male-dominated field of literature. Her brother the artist stuck with David A. Cherry.
- Comedian Louis C.K. uses that name to approximate pronunciation of his Hungarian surname, Szekely.
- Hockey player Ryane Clowe of the San Jose Sharks.
- Another example from the world of sports. And another. And whether this is a... creative spelling of Sheryl or a misguided homage to a '60s girl group, the world may never know.
- "Cockburn" is a Scottish surname (and a street name in Edinburgh). Seriously. It's pronounced 'co-burn', though, so it's okay. Even we Scots laugh at it, so feel free.
- Willem Dafoe's birth name is "William". He used the Dutch spelling so people would not call him "Billy".
- Reader's Digest has printed one anecdote of a man ordering a birthday cake for his wife, name of Dee. As a last-second thought, he requested "Add a 30." Apparently the bakery wasn't going to question odd name spellings, because the cake came back "Happy Birthday, Deee".
- TV presenter and actor Cat Deeley's real name is, unsurprisingly, Catherine. But the actor's union Equity already had a Catherine Deeley, and Cate, Kate, Katherine, etc. In interviews, she said the name "Cat" made her stick out, and was key to her success.
- There's a tournament Magic: The Gathering player who goes by I@n DeGraff.
- The real-life surname "Featherstonehaugh" is, in defiance of all sense, approximately pronounced "Fanshaw" *
as mentioned three times above .
- Similarly, "Wriothesley" is pronounced "Risley".
- New York Jets' D'Brickashaw Ferguson, named after Father Ralph de Bricassart of The Thorn Birds.
- At least he's named after something. What's LaDainian Tomlinson's excuse? For that matter, how'd he manage to find a wife with a name just as far out of La La Land? Mrs. LaDainian Tomlinson's name is LaTorsha.
- There's a well-known Magic: The Gathering writer/editor who goes by the name "The Ferrett" in real life as well as an online pseudonym.
- Another rare surname example: For a time in the 1980s, country singer Janie Fricke spelled her name "Frickie" so that people would know how to pronounce it. When the radio DJs finally stopped announcing her as "Janie Frick", she changed it back.
- Not quite a name, and not for the first time, but George Bernard Shaw is said to have pointed out, in illustrating the peculiarities of English pronunciation, that the word "fish" could be spelled g-h-o-t-i, with gh pronounced as in "rough", "o" as in "women", and "ti" as in "nation". The Christian punk band "Ghoti Hook" took their name from this concept, though in their case the word is pronounced "go-tee".
- This is also the etymology of "Dr. Ghoti", a supervillain from Supermegatopia, who is a Mad Scientist, turned into a fish, in a robotic exoskeleton.
- To be completely fair, Shaw is nothing but wrong here. No English-speaker would ever look at ghoti and pronounce it "fish", because gh can only be pronounced as such at the end of a word and ti can only be pronounced as such before another vowel. English spelling does have its problems, but ghoti isn't one of them.
- Not to mention that that explanation requires a certain accent. Using the "o" from "women" (quite often pronounced as a schwa) would lead to a fair chunk of English speakers talking about going feshing...
- Shaw's point was not that you could spell fish this way, but that we do misspell words like ruff, wimen, and nashun.
- Ben Franklin tried to eliminate these spelling errors with his phonetic dictionary, but didn't get very far.
- The creator of The Simpsons is Matt Groening ("graining")
- Still better than the current Speaker of the US House of Representatives, John Boehner. The first syllable is pronounced "bay". Y'know, the body of water. "Groany" and even "Gro-nig" aren't nearly as aggravating as what anyone named Boehner has to deal with.
- It's more probably that the syllable Groe from Groening should be pronounced as in the last name of the famous Nazi Luftwaffe General Herman Goering, or like "oo" if it's of Dutch origin.
- German dipthongs in general are the opposite of their English spelling. So, you have "oe" ("ai" or "eu" in English), "eu" ("oi" or "ei" in English). "Neiman" is thus an anglicization of Neumann.
- As "Rape" is of Reeb. Really.
- The town of Hamilton!, Ohio, apparently so named to encourage tourism. Another town with exclamation marks in its name is St-Louis-du-Ha! Ha! in Quebec.
- Interestingly, however, in the latter case, this is not recent development to attract tourists, but old slang for a dead-end.
- And Westward Ho! in England.
- Actress Jackée Harry (sometimes just Jackée or Jackee).
- There's a former Apple Computer developer named Bo3b Johnson. No, that's not a typo. The 3 is, of course, silent.
- k.d. lang prefers her name to be spelled without capitals.
- As does danah boyd.
- And jessica drake.
- And bell hooks.
- And rk post.
- Famed poet E. E. Cummings sometimes signed his works in all lowercase letters. And now there are sites describing the peculiar problems associated with this practice: in particular, that some began claiming that he had legally changed his name to all small letters. His wife has stated outright that he did not. Cummings himself wasn't necessarily fond of the spelling, but his publishers thought it would be fun if they mimicked his poetry in the spelling of his name.
- This is also a fairly common practice in the BDSM community. Submissives/Slaves often take (or are given) an all-lowercase name to indicate their subservience.
- Singer Cyndi Lauper.
- Author Jennifer 8. Lee. Her middle name is the numeral eight, and she writes it as shown here.
- The creator of the webcomic Wondermark is "David Malki !". He insists that the space and the exclamation point are part of his name.
- He probably lifted this practice from cartoonist Scott Shaw!, who has spelled his name with an exclamation point since the early '80s.
- Or Elliot S! Maggin, who did it in the late '70s.
- More recently, this practice was used by the band Panic! At the Disco. They later changed the band name to simply Panic At The Disco then changed it back due to half the band leaving.
- Add Godspeed You! Black Emperor to this list
- Stephenie Meyer is one of these.
- Singer Eithne Ní Bhraonáin. You may know her as Enya, the best approximation to what her name is in Gaelige.
- "Cozy" Okada, formerly of Atlus. His name is Kouji, which can be romanized as "Cozy" due to some oddities of how Japanese maps to the Latin alphabet.
- Hakeem Olajuwon used to drop the H for the benefit of Americans. Once most of us knew the H was silent, he put it back.
- Not quite. He changed from an African spelling to an Arabic one when he became a more devout Muslim, if The Other Wiki is to be believed.
- 'Pataphysics. Not pataphysics; it's 'pataphysics. The apostrophe actually has a function here: it was intended to prevent Incredibly Lame Puns in French with the name, such as "patte à physique" (leg of physics), "pas ta physique" (not your physics), or "pâte à physique" (physics dough).
- Prince, who changed his name to that unpronounceable symbol in the mid-90s. This is apparently because the record company he had been working for claimed ownership of the trademark "Prince" after a contract dispute, which left Prince without a name. Hence, the "artist formerly known as Prince" bit.
- This is actually a much more fascinating story. Warner couldn't enforce a trademark on the name of Prince, because you own your name and may use it as you wish. Prince owed four albums to Warner under contract. Since Warner seemed intent on ramping the Executive Meddling up to stratospheric proportions, and would not release him from contract, Prince changed his name to the symbol, hammered out four albums of complete crap in a couple of months, and waited until the last album was published and the contract was finished to change his name back — in effect, burning some of the worth of his identity to escape Warner. He still uses the symbol to a limited extent, since any publicity is good publicity.
- J-Pop group PUFFY was forced to change their name stateside after being sent a cease & desist letter by Sean "Puffy" Combs.
- One of the major creators of both The World Of Darkness tabletop systems and the Ars Magica roleplaying game spelled his name Mark Rein* Hagen, and jokingly insisted that the asterisk was pronounced with a click.
- The "official" spelling in the credits of the printed rulebooks was a bullet point (like the one starting this example) in the middle of his name, not an asterisk, which is why he was also often jokingly called Mark Rein"dot"Hagen. The asterisk was usually used when referring to him on newsgroups and (later on) mailing lists dedicated to the Old World Of Darkness, because it's available on standard keyboards whereas the bullet is not. He's since given up on this affectation, and now uses just a common hyphen.
- In Australia, there is a well-known advertising executive named Siimon Reynolds, who spells his name with two "i"s because a numerologist told him it would bring him luck. What it brought him was a lot of mockery from stand-up comedians, as he became a shiining example of pretentiousness in the advertiising iindustry.
- No strange spellings, but J. K. Rowling used initials to obscure her gender when getting her start. The K doesn't stand for anything and isn't actually part of her legal name.
- According to the other Wiki "as she had no middle name, she chose K as the second initial of her pseudonym, from her paternal grandmother Kathleen; it has never been part of her legal name."
- The name Sean, which looks like it should be pronounced Seen or See-ann, is actually Shawn. It's now often seen spelled as Shawn to help people get the pronunciation right.
- Actually, Sean is the Irish spelling, Shaun is the British spelling, and Shawn is the American spelling. All the spellings are acceptable in any country though.
- Fantasy author Seanan McGuire has frequently expressed surprise that people can’t pronounce her name, since it’s basically just “Sean” with an “-an” at the end (SHAWN-in). Apparently it’s an archaic, Irish form of “Janet.”
- Cartoonist, comic book creator, and host of Oddball Comics Scott Shaw! The exclamation point is included.
- Tracy Yardley! of Sonic the Hedgehog comic fame, who is, by the way, male. People are much less consistent about spelling Yardley's name this way than they are with Shaw!'s, for some reason.
- Andy Shernoff of the band The Dictators often writes his name as Adny.
- Noted Canadian singer-songwriter Jane Siberry must have had a crisis of conscience sometime during 2006, because she apparently changed her name to Issa Light, the feminine form of the name "Isaiah". Not only that, but she sold her house and almost all of her possessions, and now reportedly travels. As a minstrel.
- There's a fantasy writer and game designer named "Stan!".
- Barbra Streisand changed her name from the standard "Barbara" in the late 1950s.
- Fall Out Boy's Patrick Stump, real last name Stumph. It's spelled "Stump" so people will figure out that the "h" is silent.
- The game designer Suda51, who the uninitiated assume is a development team. He is in fact a single person, and his name stems from a Japanese pun on his real name, Suda Goichi. "Go" can mean five, and "ichi" can mean one, thus the nickname "51". It is also typically pronounced "Five One" and not "Fifty-one", which is an entirely different Japanese word.
- A couple from New Zealand named their daughter Talula does the hula from Hawaii. Apparently, the girl was taken into custody because the name was seen as child abuse.
- U.S. President Harry S Truman, whose middle name was actually "S". (His parents couldn't decide which grandfather to honor with his middle name; they settled on "S", which could have referred to either.)
- Singer KT Tunstall. Yes, it's pronounced "Katie", and the K is short for her real first name, Kate.
- Let's not forget Miami Heat basketballer Dwyane Wade. Yes, it's pronounced "Dwayne". Just... just roll with it.
- That's not his fault. He's actually Dwyane Wade, Jr.
- Also, Antawn Jamison. Pronounced "Antoine".
- Oprah Winfrey was originally named Orpah after a minor Biblical character; in her childhood people kept mispronouncing it, so she became Oprah.
- I thought it was the result of a misprint on the birth certificate, and that her actual name was Oprah but it wasn't supposed to be. Kind of like the example immediately above.
- The town of Westward Ho! in southwest England has the exclamation mark as part of its official name. Just like in the Charles Kingsley novel of the same name.
- Check out Hubert Blaine Wolfe+585, Sr. The +585 isn't actually part of the name — it's a reference to the fact that "Wolfe" is actually just the first 5 letters of a 590-letter surname. Also, Hubert and Blaine aren't his only two first names. He has 26, each one beginning with a different letter of the alphabet.
- And as long as we're talking comics, there's just no ignoring the sheer precocious pretentiousness of catherine "cat" yronwode
- The Australian town of 1770 is sometimes misspelled as Seventeen-Seventy.
- It is said that an old typeface used for visiting cards in England during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries featured a capital F that looked like two small fs written together. English families whose name begins with f and who were important enough to have visiting cards printed way back then have been affecting to spell their names with two small fs ever since.
- Like Jasper Fforde.
- Predating the eighteenth century, ff was the capital F in Elizabethan secretary handwriting as well.
- D'Eath is a real Anglo-Norman name. It's pronounced Dee-Ath. It's amazing how many scary characters in fiction get given this name.
- This is a commonly believed but wholly incorrect urban legend. "Death" is a real English name deriving from the medieval mystery plays, where roles were usually passed down from father to son. Many English surnames come from the characters portrayed in the mystery plays - Death, King, Queen, Virgin, Saint, Prince, Maiden, Lord, etc. The idea that "Death" is an old Norman name arose only in Victorian times, when having a namerelating to death was considered coarse and disgusting, so they made up a new etymology. There is no such place as Eath in Normandy; there is an Ath in Belgium, but it was founded four hundred years after the first instance of the surname "Death" in England.
- There is a Japanese porn star who uses the name @you. It's very hard to search for. In Japanese, people call her "Atto You" (At You).
- Posh old British names with a "zie" in them. Dalziel="dee-el", Menzies="ming". How did that come about?
- That's because there used to be an old letter in English called a "yogh", which looked like a 3. It represented the old gh sound (like the raspy g in saguaro). However, when that letter was dropped, people began using z to write it. Thus, Dalziel=dee-el (the gh sound sometimes disappears when before e or i) and Menzies=ming (more accurately ming-ess).
- And they aren't 'posh' English names, they are perfectly ordinary Scottish ones: witness Sir Menzies Campbell, affectionately known as "Ming." (And no, he's not particularly posh: he earned the knighthood, and he didn't go to a public school.)
- The name Ralph (as with actor Ralph Fiennes and composer Ralph Vaughan Williams) is sometimes given pronounced "Rafe," an alternative pronunciation that appears to have developed in England during the Great Vowel Shift circa 1350-1500. Ralph Wedgwood, a philosophy professor, wrote a page all about the pronunciation of his given name.
- Saiorse Ronin's first name is pronounced Seer-sha.
- It's normally pronounced something more like sair-sha (first syllable to rhyme with air). It's an Irish name meaning "freedom", popular for boys after the insurrection, now exclusively female. It's usually spelled Saoirse.
- American alpine skier (and Olympic gold medalist) Picabo Street. (It's pronounced like the baby game "peek-a-boo".)
- There's an actress named Karen Cliche (pronounced "kleesh").
- Which is correct, if you take in account that the noun cliche was originally written cliché : in French, "e" is either not pronounced, or pronounced a slight variant "uh", while é is always pronounced a slight variant of "eh".
- The Indiana college named "Notre Dame" is always pronounced "noter dayme".
- The city of Terre Haute in the same state is pronounced "tear-a-hote," and the county it's in, Vigo County, is divided as to whether the name is pronounced "vee-go" or "vye-go."
- Underground Comics artist Krystine Kryttre. Maybe.
- A surprisingly common example is the name Anthony. Many people (especially Americans) do not realise the H was originally silent and pronounce it "An-thony" instead of "An-tony".
- The spelling of Matthew with one t is probably a Celtic thing, in non-Celtic speaking countries it is seen as odd and likely to be misspelt by people.
- Amy has been spelt as Aimee, Jane been spelt as Jayne and Ashley been spelt as Ashlee in recent years to the point where people are unaware they are variant spellings.
- Britney Spears (before she became famous, the name was usually spelt Brittany)
- Megyn Kelly.
- American actor Jaimz Woolvett.
- Synthesizer pioneer Robert Moog. Ask most people and they'll call his instrument a "Moooog" and that's cool but the man himself preferred the long "O" like "Moge".
- Makes one wonder how you pronounce the "moogerfooger" series of effects pedals by the same company.
Stand-up Comedy
- Parodied by the late great George Carlin (Classic Gold): "Your name can be spelled S-M-I-T-H and you can pronounce it 'Jenovsky' if you want to, you know? What's your name? Jenovsky. How's that spelled? S-m-i-t-h. What?! They're all silent, nevermind..."
Tabletop Games
- Almost all of the suggested human names in fourth edition Dungeons & Dragons are differently spelled variations of regular names.
Theater
Videogames
- Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception gives us the Cariburn with a R, whereas King Arthur's first sword is Caliburn with a L. At least, one hopes that the l/r mess here is intentional...
- Don't forget CRAYNE CONSTRUCTION!
- U-1 from Gitaroo Man. In the Japanese, it is pronounced "Yuichi" (U-ichi, geddit?). The English version pronounces it "U-Wun", though.
- Many minor NPCs in Guild Wars, such as henchmen Kihm, Little Thom, and Jamei, and also General Morgahn.
- Alyx of Half-Life 2.
- A number of characters from Jak and Daxter, mostly because the setting is a Fantasy Counterpart Culture that resembles Earth. Jak and Daxter themselves are the obvious examples. Others are Erol, Rayn and Ximon.
- To spoof how the word "gnome" is spelled with a silegnt "g," all the gnomes in Kigngdom of Loathigng sprignkle their speech and gnames with silegnt "g"s before the "n"s. For example, "Hagnk" ignstead of "Hank", and greetigng you with "Greetigngs, advegnturer!" ignstead of "Greetings, adventurer!".
- Maggey Byrde from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Justice for All, for plot reasons. Her first trial as a murder suspect revolves around the victim writing her name wrong (using the more common spelling of "Maggie").
- In the original Japanese version, her name is Mako Suzuki. In this case it revoles around the victim using the wrong rendition of the surname (Victim wrote: 鈴木, the more common rendition. The actual rendering: 須々木, which is non-standard)
- Indeed, forgeries being identified through misspelling of names is a common thread in mystery fiction.
- Aran Ryan from the Punch-Out!! series.
- Psymon Stark of the SSX series. There isn't exactly a story behind it, but as you migh have guessed, he's a bit of an oddball. The kind with serious mental health issues, that is.
- It's a remarkably common occurrence in Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume. While the protagonist's name, Wylfred, isn't common enough that spelling is an issue, it does pop up with other potential party members including Phiona, Rosea, and Heugoe. Seriously, Heugoe?
- Serah in Final Fantasy XIII.
- Touhou Project characters whose names are written in Kanji have their names presented as given name first, family name second (for example, it would be said "Marisa Kirisame" rather than "Kirisame Marisa"). This isn't an issue for Western audiences, as that's normal here, but in Japan, where most of the series' fandom is...
- Occurs often in MMORPGs, when certain names are not allowed.
- While it isn't a common name, it's worth mentioning that Captain Qwark's name is not spelled like the word "Quark". Puzzlingly, Alister Azimuth gets his name misspelled quite frequently, too, despite having the standard spelling in both his first and last name.
Web Comics
- While names like Ceilidh (kay-lee) and Ciaran (keer-un) are traditional Scottish names, Avalon's characters largely use the less common spellings of their names, although Phoebe prefers her name pronounced "feeb".
- Blond from the webcomic ''Blue and Blond'' is very particular about the fact that his name does not have an 'e' on the end, and will know if you spelled it that way in conversation.
- Grrl from Cat And Girl is this, in order to contrast with Girl.
- Played for Laughs in Drowtales, with Val'erie Val''Ley'gurl
- Xykon from Order of the Stick will kill you if you misspell his name. "Zs are for pussies." (Somehow he's able to tell the difference when people are speaking.)
- Robot names in Schlock Mercenary: See here. "5er0" has the pronunciation "Vernon", treating 5 as V and 0 as "none".
- Jame from Terror Island. "It's like James, but there's only one of me."
- As we find out whenever someone from the Wotch's world hears it spoken for the first time, "Xaos" is actually pronounced like "Chaos".
- xkcd has an example here.
- The Noob parodies the high rate of this in MMORPGs (where multiple characters with the exact same name are not allowed). Ohforf visits an elven city where all the males are named variations of Legolas (Legolass, Leggolas, Legolaus) and all the females are Arwen (Arwyn, Arrwen, Arwhen). Ohforf also runs into this problem when first naming his character and tries Aragorn. When the game tells him it's taken, he then tries about ten misspellings of it while the computer makes fun of him for the attempt.
- Writer T Campbell is fond of this trope. Fans! has Rikk (instead of Rick) and Alisin (instead of Alison/Allison); Penny and Aggie has Cyndi (Cindy) and Lynda (Linda).
Web Original
- In a parody of pre-rendered 90s adventure games such as Myst, J Nash recalls a magazine feature entitled 'Ryndyr' As the Dyngyyn Kyypyr of Ryndyr himself might say, “Gyyd lyck!”.
- Larry Bundy, Junior , British web and TV personality, uses the US abbreviation ("Jr.") instead of the British abbreviation ("Jnr").
- A cybernetics company in Darwin's Soldiers is named Weyland-Yutani. Word Of God states that it is pronounced "Vey-land OO-tani".
Western Animation
- Codename: Kids Next Door:
Numbuh 4: It does now.
- Justice League: The Martian Manhunter, J'onn J'onzz.
- J'onn J'onnz is a Martian. From Mars. His odd name is probably excusable. And when he pretends to be a human, he calls himself John Jones. So.
- In the cartoon short "Jack-Jack Attack" (based on an unseen incident in The Incredibles) Kari the babysitter says her name is like Carrie, but spelled with a K, one R and no E. And pronounced Car-E.
- In the Gary the Rat, Gary's regular cheese delivery man (named Bud), was sick one day and replaced with his cousin "Bud with an L". After a moment of silence, he mentions that the L is silent. Don't ask me how you spell Bud with an L. I have no idea.
- There's a minor character on My Life as a Teenage Robot named "Pteresa". The P is silent.
- In Planet Sheen, Doppy says him name is spelled, "D-O-P-P-tralalalalalalalalalala-Y." The tralalalalalas are silent, but felt.
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