My husband and I are planners by nature; weโve come to accept that about ourselves and embrace the order that comes from the โbest laid plans.โ Naming our son was no exception. We carefully planned our first pregnancy, although nature made us wait six months before a faint pink plus sign appeared. With a positive pregnancy test came books like โWhat to Expect When Youโre Expecting,โ and the infamous โ10,000 Baby Names.โ Planning for our babyโs name became a fun and exciting way to decompress after a long week.
As my husband flipped through the baby name book, we playfully tossed out names that we loved and hated. I had always envisioned naming a son Jackson, because a.) My name is Jacki and what fun it would be to have a โJack-sonโ b.) it was a strong name when pared with our last. However, when a work acquaintance named her future first born son Jaxson, we ditched it and started from scratch. Lucas and Oliver were thrown around as possibilities, as well as a few laughs over others like Jaeger.
Then one day while watching television on yet another Friday night and flipping through the baby name book, my husband turned to me and uttered the perfect name for our baby boy. โWhat about Halen?โ It sounded perfect, our little baby boy Halen.
When Halen was born, our families and friends had a hard time pronouncing it at first, so we found ourselves saying, โHalen, like from Van Halen.โ Over time Halenโs name grew on them, my own mother saying one day, โI just canโt imagine Halen by any other name.โ For every positive comment, weโd also get a few negative ones too, mostly from strangers. โIt sounds like a girlโs name,โ or โDid you say Helen?โ
And then we found out we were moving to France, where things changed for our Halen completely.
Selecting a baby name when living in the United States where the letter H is pronounced clearly and often, a name like Heather, Heath, or Halen is fine. In France, where the H is NEVER pronounced, H-A-L-E-N spells trouble. My husband, while studying French, realized it first, and casually suggested that we start calling Halen by his middle name, which I quickly disregarded. โHis name is Halen. We canโt start calling him by a new name.โ Once we finally moved to France, we quickly forgot the โHโ issue, largely in part because all of the new friends we made were English speakers and could pronounced his name perfectly.
In September when classes started, we quickly remembered the name trouble. At our meet and greet before school began, Halen’s new teacher, a sweet and English-speaking woman said, “So does Allen speak any French?” to which we replied a quick no.ย The next day, and for every day after that while walking into school, Halen is greeted by everyone, teachers and students, as โAllen.โ As he looks around, taking in his new surroundings and the new language that floods his ears, he literally has no idea that people are even talking to him.
Our friends and family suggest that we firmly ask the teachers to call him Halen, pronouncing the H clearly. While we certainly appreciate those thoughtful suggestions, asking twenty-eight little 3-year-olds to pronounce a sound they’ve never heard just doesn’t seem fair. So “Allen” it is.
Every day at pickup time his teacher bellows โAlllleeeennnnn, tu maman! Allen!!โ and my momma heart breaks a little. I know that this is the adjustment phase, that Halenโs little mind is busy processing all of the new sounds and experiences he has at school.
I just wish understanding his name in French wasnโt one of them.
Parents whose children have difficult names to pronounce, how do you handle this problem? Would you insist on the pronunciation of the H?
This is an original post to World Moms Blog by Jacki from France.
The photograph used in this post is attributed to the author.
Oh, I feel for you!! No one here in Kenya pronounces Caleb’s name correctly, but it’s just cah-leb instead of cay-leb. He sometimes insists that his name is Cay-leb, but I find after 2 years that I’m actually introducing him as Cah-leb because Kenyan’s will understand it so much more easily that way. My husband, Colin, is always called “Collins”, so now he introduces himself that way too. I think we’ve just folded because it became a battle we didn’t feel like fighting. Caleb has come to expect that Kenyans say his name differently than expats. But I know how hard the adjustment is when you worked so hard to pick out that perfect name. I just have come to think of it has his “local name.” Hopefully it will become easier with time. Great post!
I love this. We already started saying that “Allen” is how you say Halen in French and that’s his French name. =) He’s starting to get it.
I love Mama Mzungu comment about Allen being his “French” name.
Awww, I can relate to a degree. People here have a hard time pronouncing and writing my name, Maureen. Going to starbucks always a hassle until I start borrowing my son’s name ๐
They always spell my name Jacqui at Starbucks in France. In the US it’s Jacky or Jackie. =)
Great post. Although my kids’ names seem to translate well so far, my own name is a tricky one. When I studied in Paris, I had to quickly adjust to the new version of my name…and eventually introduced myself that way. Even now, I’ll check where someone is from before explaining how to pronounce my name. I’m okay with the variations, but I’m sure it’s a lot to take in for your little guy. Hopefully things will get easier. (Maureen, maybe I should start using your son’s name at Starbucks too…less spelling involved!)
Thank you Shaula!
I relate … even though my story is a bit different. Both my children “came” with their names. It might sound weird, but I was convinced that I was not just pregnant with a boy – I was pregnant with Kyle. That might not seem like a problem … except that we’re Italian! Both sets of grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, uncles etc STILL can’t pronounce or spell my son’s name … and he’ll be 20 in Jan!! Same thing with baby number 2. I wanted to call her Megan, but 3 months into my pregnancy I woke up one morning and announced “this isn’t Megan, it’s Victoria” … and so it was. ALL my Italian relatives insist on calling her Vittoria (and spelling it that way too) and she’s already 16 years old!! We’ve also given up on correcting them … after all this time, there’s NO CHANCE they’ll get it right!
Since we live in South Africa, my name causes problems too. I really dislike it when they call me Simone or (even worse) Simonay! ugh!! My husband (Alessandro) on the other hand, simply goes by Alex and is quite happy!
Simona, too funny! Yup, we basically have no control over how people use our names, which is funny and frustrating at the same time.
Ohhh poor little guy! The h is hard for the trench to pronounce yet I am sure they can do it if they try. I’d keep on em! ๐
I just can’t try to get little French kids to say an H but as they get older and start learning English, maybe Halen will get to be Halen instead of Allen.
This post truly hits home with me, having grown up with a French mother. My sister and I always laugh at how she pronounces air as “hair” and how she can’t seem to say hair, she pronounces it “air”. :-). I was the lucky one, with a name that every culture has a version of (Isabelle). My sister is the unlucky one in the department. Her name is Karine (with the French pronunciation of the “r”). Growing up in the US she has been called Karen, Kareen, Kathline, to name a few….she has finally given up and just introduces herself as Kareen now, which is a constant conversation in our home and drives my mother crazy. ๐
Where did your mom grow up in France?
I remember everyone getting their “French names” in French class and being really happy Suzanne was the same (well, almost, it sounds prettier in French). When I told my sister I was thinking of naming my daughter after her, she said one of the reasons she loved her name was there is a version of “Carolyn/Caroline” in every language she’d encountered while living and traveling in Europe and Africa. But it wasn’t something I ever would have considered important when originally choosing a name. I’m sure HJ will understand it’s his special French name. p.s. LOVE Halen. LOVE.
I never thought of that but it’s true, Caroline is such a universal (and beautiful) name. I’m glad you like “Halen” (some people don’t and that’s okay, they don’t have to) we like it too!
Try and say my name ๐
Nobody outside of the Netherlands has ever been able to correctly pronounce my name without lots of practice and trying very hard. I prefer to go by Katherine and I like the fact that I have a Dutch and an English name – just like many local people in Singapore do!
We never thought E.’s name would be difficult, as every sound in the name exists in all languages I know (it’s a bit like Isabelle in a way) but somehow the combination of sounds weirds people out. So she now has an English name (the first part of her name) as well. Actually, she’s getting on to her third name, as her toddler friends prefer to call her by the second part of her name!
I mainly find it very funny, but then I had the opposite feeling about naming her anyway. I never felt that I had the right to determine who she was, so I am sort of still waiting for her to tell me her “real” name – and then I’ll call her that.
That’s beautiful…. waiting for her to tell you her real name.
I can so identify with this post! My son’s name is Kenan, which is considered a unique English name (it came from the old Testament and is pronounced as Kee-nan). We never thought his name will be hard to pronounce but during his first-month celebration, most people just have a hard time figuring out how to pronounce it! I even have a friend who thought it’s a Chinese name (spelt in hanyupinyin) and called him “Ke Neng” (which means can or possible in English) – I wasn’t sure to be upset or to laugh about it! *hahaha* Thankfully all his teachers have no problems pronouncing his name so far ๐
I knew a Kenan once, definitely not a common name in the states. It always was easy for me to pronounce but for others they had a hard time. Awesome name!
I know how frustrating it can get for a little kid if his name isn’t pronounced properly. My son is named Tristan, which isn’t a commonly used name here in the Philippines. At parties, and even when he was starting school, people would call him Christian, a name more familiar to Filipinos. When he eventually learned to spell his name, it got a bit easier for him to introduce himself. He’d spell out T-R-I-S-T-A-N whenever someone called him Christian by mistake. Now that he’s older he’s choosing to go by the nickname Tris, which people mistake for Tres. LOL it never ends. But he has fun with it now, so it’s all good.
I love the name Tristan! It’s funny once we grow older there’s a need to develop our own “name.” I didn’t change my nickname but did alter the spelling, dropping the “e” because it looked cooler to me. Ha! I wonder if Halen will be a “Hale?”
Hale is a cute name! But if you drop the H sound, then it becomes Ale… =P
Ainsley get’s ANN-Sley all the time and it makes me GD crazy! I immediately correct – “AIN- like rhymes with RAIN!!” to help people out. She is NOT AN ANN!!! ๐
Also? I love HALEN!! What an awesome name!
I started giggling – not sure if you realized that it’s also pronounced like “haleine” which means breath (like good breath or bad breath). Allen is much much better than that! ๐
Halen in English is a great name. You can see why we had to be extra careful with all of our kids and give them bilingual names because we are in it for the long haul.
My daughter was born in Quรฉbec, where they ADD and “H” to words that start with vowels. Everyone was sneering, “Heaven, oh how very Californian of you to name your daughter Heaven.”
I never found a way to get them to say Evan, so we moved (not the real reason, just good timing).
ON a funnier note, my last name is an obscenity in French, which is particularly fun when dealing with the police, schools and gov’t officials.
With a surname like Van Der Zwet I totally related to this post! We chose simple and old-fashioned names so that our boys didn’t have to worry about people messing up both their names.
Yep! I feel your pain! Having endured the name Jennifer (Jennifer P., as there were so many), I was looking for something more unique for my kids. All have family names, but my oldest has one from my Norwegian side. The most common spelling is Severin, but we spelled it Sevrin to make it easier in America. No matter, he still gets “Servin” and “Seven”. Now he is 13 and I asked him about it recently. “I love my name,” he said. “I wouldn’t change a thing.” Hang in there and thanks for a great post!
Jacki,
One day he’ll be making new friends and say, “My name is Halen, but in France, my friends call me Allen.” He will be quite the international man of mystery. I love it!!!
Jen ๐
Great post Jacki, I never thought about how confusing it must be for the little ones! I’m lucky in that my real name “travels well”, although it is pronounced differently here and I’ve given up introducing myself by the related nickname I usually use in English. In fact, the reason I go by a short form in English is because ironically, people always call me by a different but similar name in English, which gets on my nerves!
Names and cross cultures do have a way of causing problems. When my daughter was born here in France we gave her my grandmothers name, an anglosaxon name but one that closely resembles a popular French men’s name. Even the staff at the clinique where she was born wrote her sex as ‘masculine’ on the declaration for us to take to the Mairie. We’ve faced years of correcting people and given that we’ve decided to stay permanently in France, the constant headache of correcting pronunciation isn’t about to end. I do wish I’d made it easier on her though and might do things differently if I had the time over again.