Sophia, Maria

[Joel S. Berson]

At 4/19/2008 09:20 AM, Damien Hall wrote:
>My eldest niece (6, a Londoner born of a Londoner mother and an Ecuadorian
>father) is Rosa María /rOs@ m at ri:@/.  To mark her Hispanic heritage she has a
>Hispanic name complete with an acute accent over the <í>, and so of course the
>pronunciation of the second element of her name
>is the Hispanic one.  Brits may
>omit the acute accent in her name, and they may be confused about how to
>pronounce the first part of it ([rowz@] is frequent),

I like this pronunciation.  Apt for an energetic, boisterous child.

>and they may think that
>it is optional to use the second part because very few Brits have
>double-barrelled first names;  but I have never heard anyone say [m at rai@] for
>the second part of the name.
>
>I don't know too many British Sophias, but my impression is that the
>pronunciation of that name is variable between
>[s at fi:@] and [s at fai@], depending
>on the individual case.

Not so-fee-uh or so-fie-uh?  (In my phonetic alphabet)

Joel

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