Top Ten Tuesday: ‘How do you pronounce it?’ names

Hosted by That artsy reader girl.

This week topic was all about character names. Well,the original direction was best character names but those that I love, find interesting I have hundreds of so I needed some lines to narrow it down. Then in last week top tens on one of the blogs I saw someone do worst character names and the idea struck me then. What if I collect the names I had a hard time pronouncing? I have quite a few of them as well and I’m sure I didn’t collect all of them but it is still a shorter list than the other one would have been. Since I’m not a neative english speaker sometimes names in books create quite a headache to figure out. But to be honest with you all I don’t think it’s always only due to language barriers so to speak. Some of the authors can come up with pretty strange names. Not all of the names are long and complex but due to the difference between my language and english even shorter, simple looking ones can be decieving.

1.- 2.  Cvareh and Vhalla: These first  two I’m putting together because all of them are the brianchild of the same author. The first one is from The alchemist of loom and the second one is from Air awakens written by Elise Kova. I know that they don’t look to complicated but neither of them are pronounced as they are written down. I looked interviews and such where the author explains the story behind the names and states the right pronounciation but I never could remember them so I probably butchered the names several times during reading the books.

3. Darayavahoush e-Afshin from The city of Brass: Okay so I probably can pronounce this one if I go really slow and syllable by syllable, which is not the most productive way to go when you are reading and want to progress in a decent way. Cases like this (extra long and complicated names) I find a nickname or a shortened veriosn their name to use while reading. In this occaision the author did this for me/us because she rarely used the character full name in the story, ir was more of a status thing.

4. Chaol Westfall from Throne of glass: Okay I know it is not only me who had some problems with this name and I also aware that the author put the phonetical form it out there as hel for her readers but I just can’t memorize this. Also I was already at book 3 or 4 when it occured to me to look for the proper pronounciation and by then itwa too late because I already got used to an incorrect form. It is hard to kick and it pisses me of to no ends.

5. Dilys Merimydion from The sea king: In this case my main struggle was with the character family name. For me the consonants always got mixed up any time I wanted to read it out.

6. Curran from the Kate Daniels series: I know, I know it looks easy and simple but I have no freaking idea how his name is properly pronounced. I can’t even say it in my head so don’t even ask me to say it out loud. It just one of those names that confuse me.

7. Seoafin Wilde form Wildest dreams: Yes, there is such a thing that to much vowels after each other. So here is the case, there are cases in my language as wel when we are putting 3 vowels after each other but we pronounce each one, where as in english one is usually silent (as for which one is anyone guess) or they represent a different sound. And thats why I have a problem with words like her first name when it comes to pronounciation.

8. Caia from The tales of Lunarmorte: This one again looks pretty easy but I read this book pretty early in my reading carrier and again in english you can pronounce c as a c or a k and come the silent vowels and such again. So along the series I probably changed how to say this name 4 times and haveno idea which one wa the right one.

9.  Algaliarept from The hollows: So he had a pretty big role in the series but for me he always going to be simply Al because for the life of me I can’t pronounce his full name.

10. Cedamihn Ahyanesh’ala from the Tweleve kings of Sharakahi: Read this out fast and several times after each other, you are good if you can because I can’t. But thinking about it the main character name wasn’t the only one I had a hard time, there were other names, places and foods that had the similar effect on me.

+1: I had a couple of more that I actually collected and some that I’m sure are there somewhere among the stories I already read but there was one I wanted to mention. This one is not really falls into the unpronouncable category but it strange: Greening Grandemalion form Graceling. However the main reason why I put it here is because I find it curious that in the hungarian translation of the book this name also translated and it takes up 3 lines. I laughed so hard when I first read it and thang god for the nickname.