Tuesday, December 6, 2011

What's in a name?

We did it. I apologize in advance to our sweet baby girl. For the rest of her life, she will have to deal with her name being mispronounced. In waiting rooms everywhere there will be a pause, and then a tentative calling of "Ay-lee Valenti?"
Not that I don't like the name Ay-lee; in fact I was thinking of it as a serious contender, but was worried that  people would think the first letter of her name (like a B or H or K) was left off.

For the record, our daughter's name is Ailey Marie Valenti (and no, it doesn't bother me at all that all three of her names end in an "ee" sound). Ailey is a name of Scottish/Irish origin and means "light" and "pleasant." You pronounce her first name as eye-lee, but we didn't want to spell it that way because it is a bit too...too...functional and puts the first thought into someone's head of an eyeball. 

Phonetically speaking, our nephew Sam informed us that her name does not "play fair," because "when two vowels go walking the first one says its name," hence it should be "Ay-lee." Maybe we did misspell it according to the rules of the English language, but when did this language ever really play fair?

Welcome to the world!

5 comments:

Robyn said...

I love the name and couldn't imagine it spelled another way other than the eyeball way either. I think you made a good choice! Can't wait to see more of the little darling!

{swank}mama said...

Cute name! If I have a girl, I already have the name picked out and it's similar to yours in the way that it's not pronounced the way it's spelled.

Overthunk said...

Hi, I was hitting Next Blog and it was meant to be that I happened upon yours. My son's name is Aisaiah and mine is Aileen -- both pronounced "eye"-- I completely understand because I'm also an educator! We liked the name Isaiah but have a family tradition of A's.. Love the name!

Grace J. said...

I just stumbled onto your blog! I love your daughter's name as well as how you spell it! She will appreciate the uniqueness one day! We named our son Jancsi (Jan-ski) which means God is gracious. We thought about changing the spelling but wanted to keep it in the original Hungarian spelling!

joy reyes said...

Cute Name!
When i was a little girl
a hated my name too but as i grow older , i kind the appreciated it .


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