Do hard to pronounce names break immersion?

I don't care about pronunciation, because I rarely pronounce even semi-common names correctly. I have trouble with even some of my own characters' names. But then, for me, written language and spoken language are far more separate in my head than they are for most people (which is why I always spectacularly failed spelling tests in school).

I do care about remembering the name. If I confuse two characters because their written names are similar (even if they're pronounced completely differently), that's a problem for me. Even worse if I don't realize they're separate characters.

I would pronounce your example name GEE-oh-love. Completely wrong. But, as a reader, I don't care. I only need something in my head so I can remember her/him.

posted almost 6 years ago

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Cyn‭

1130 reputation 25 439 215 0

It can.

Anything that makes the reader stop and think is likely to slightly derail the readers train of thought. It's a risk their attention doesn't return to where it was before.

This is always the case. Indeed it is sort of necessary for storytelling; you need new thoughts to be conjured and old ones forgotten. The trick is for these to be consistent with where you want to take the reader. If the difference in culture of the character or the story is something you want to place emphasis on, great. If it's incongruent there is every risk it interrupts a train of thought you wanted and replaces it with one you don't.

I think of it as having very similar logic to that of Chekhov's gun.

Things to note:

• It's likely not to be a big distraction and, like others have pointed out, if the reader really is immersed and wants to return: this is unlikely to prevent them.

• It will come up a lot if it's a major character but after a few views, each will be even less distracting.

• This is more of a question about the reader than the text. Pretty much anything could either jar or resonate with someone. There's no way to be certain, even if it's a cliche like calling your cow "Daisy", that won't set someone down a different path, like: "that's a bit cliched", and break immersion. The only thing you can do is be mindful of what's likely impact is for your audience.

EDIT below:

Upon reading my answer, I thought there might be a way to make my thoughts clearer: exaggerate them.

• You can use a name that's impossible to pronounce: Say you want an, alien - everything is new and confusing - science fiction/fantasy, world. Want to show the protagonist out of their depth within it? Have them meet a character they have trouble referring to because their name is a particular shade of purple. This shouldn't damage the immersion. To the contrary: if that makes sense let alone would work, might be exactly the sort of thing you might want for your readers to pondering for the sake of immersion. Casually introducing this creature as "Peter" will ask questions that, if you don't have the answer to, will probably harm that feeling.

• Or just need a rudimentary understanding of the classics to have a stab at: Say you want to play off the idea of an eccentric artistic type, it's not wrong to have them had their name changed to the ancient Egyptian hieroglyph for "axe-in-a-block-of-wood".

However: if there is no reason to do this, and the reader is not expecting it and you deviate from the Latin alphabet: it's going to linger with them until you explain why.

I also thought it may be worth noting, as has been mentioned, that there is a slightly separate issue that may come up in tandem: Names that are difficult to parse.

Say I tried to write this using html colour codes to get a shade of purple or used some academic representation of the hieroglyph. Even with the context of the question, that might trip someone up. Not something to lose sleep over, but it wouldn't add anything to the narrative. The finer points of representing hieroglyphs and why I have syntax highlighting aren't relevant to the narrative. Don't force your readers to tackle them and they will stay focused on what you want to tell them. If it's necessary to avoid calling your alien "Bob" though...

posted almost 6 years ago

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drjpizzle‭

5 reputation 0 1 1 0

Yes, I find it distracting. To me, the problem is not so much if a name is hard to pronounce, but if it's difficult to figure out how it's supposed to be pronounced.

Unless the spelling of a name is somehow important to your story, if you're going to use made up names, I'd say to spell them phonetically. If Jiolluav is supposed to be pronounced Zholl-you-of, then why not just write it "Zholl-you-of"?

This is especially true if you have multiple difficult to pronounce names that resemble each other. If there's a character named Jiolluav and another named Jaolvual, I think readers may well get them confused and find themselves constantly checking back.

Sure, in a fantasy or science fiction novel, I expect names to be unusual-sounding. If you're alien from the planet Rigel 7 is named "Roger Smith", that would be very distracting. But don't give me a name with a baffling pronunciation, like Wadlkjaece. Give me something phonetic, like Wa-juto-case or some such.

posted almost 6 years ago

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Jay‭

1055 reputation 1 97 207 0

I generally like to write that names are "anglicized" if they are indeed made up for the convience of the reader. For example, I once wrote an alien main character named "Kyron" and even then, I have at various times changed pronunciation in my head and had it pronounced it "1st syllable rhymes with sky (Kai-ron)", "1st syllable sounds like key (key-ron)", "1st syllable rhymes with beer, second sounds exactly like on (Keir-on) or second syllable sounds like ron (Keir-ron).

I don't know and have thought maybe all four were valid and different characters said different versions of the name based on their own accents and how they heard it... since there are about 5 other characters, each one could have a personal preference and the fifth is like "Wait... who's pronouncing it right?" and the original conversation is sidetracked in debate over the matter.

Speaking as someone who has a real name that is essentially a varient pronunciation of another more common name people will constantly mispronounce my name by mistake, (Shane (sounds like... well if you find a rhyme I haven't heard, I'll give you a cookie... but Train is a good word that rhymes), which is the pronunciation of the name Sean in an Ulster Irish accent, where as in America, Sean is often pronounced Shawn (sounds like Brawn)). "It's Shane" is practically my catchphrase, due to how often it happens. In fact, I had a teacher in my elementary-middle school who legitatmently taught me in almost every grade and is a family friend and to this day occasionally calls me "Shawn" by mistake... though the real winner of "You should know better" award was the mother of one of my best friends. His name is Sean and I'm Shane and his poor mother would often swap our names when talking about both of us.

Suffice to say, if your character has any contact with anyone with less familiarity of her name, she will be well aware of the mispronunciation. Like me, it wouldn't be much to suggest that she's developed a quick habit of pronunciation correction every time she hears the mispronunciation... I would say write the line once a book so your readers get it but it doesn't become forced... and maybe at funny bits (like in the middle of a fight at the heart of a volcano that's about to erupt, have a bad guy the wrong pronunciation only for her to casually correct it, while tossing 4-5 ninja mooks to their magma deaths below... Sure the fight is difficult, but correcting someone's pronunciation of my name is pretty on par with thinking about breathing.

posted almost 6 years ago

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hszmv‭

530 reputation 1 71 105 0

You can criticise me, but if I get a name like the one you have used (I can't easily see how you get to the pronunciation you give), I simplify or skip it. The consequence is that hard-to-say names get forgotten. Trying to work out who is who does break immersion. An alternative, assuming you don't want to change the names, is to spell them more phonetically.

posted almost 6 years ago

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S. Mitchell‭

280 reputation 1 25 55 0

Hard-to-pronounce names suggest a different culture. If War and Peace had its characters named not Andrei Nikolayevich Bolkonsky and Pierre Kirillovich Bezukhov, but Andrew Bolk and Peter Bek; or if the characters of the Kalevala were named not Väinämöinen and Joukahainen, but Van and John, that would ruin my immersion. It would break my immersion because the names would not match the culture presented.

As a reader, if I encounter a name I don't know how to pronounce (e.g. certain Welsh names in the Mabinogion), I pronounce it the best I can, and move on. If I am informed of the "correct" way to pronounce the name, I amend what I thought the name should have been pronounced like, and stick to the correct pronunciation. I see no problem there. (And I've never heard of anyone claiming they can't read the Mabinogion because they don't know how to pronounce the names.)

If you care about the readers pronouncing the names correctly in their heads, you can provide a pronunciation guide. Tolkien did this with The Lord of the Rings, others did it too. A pronunciation guide doesn't assure, however, that readers would actually follow the pronunciation you have in mind. For one thing, it can be somewhat hard to explain in writing what sound you have in mind. For another, if you put the pronunciation guide in the beginning, it's not sufficiently interesting, the readers are not yet sufficiently immersed in the story to care, they might well just skip it. And if you put the pronunciation guide in the end, it's already too late - the readers already have the "wrong" name in their heads, and they've already finished the book anyway.

An alternative is to add some hint within the story. A name can be woven into a bit of verse, so the rhyme helps the reader understand how the name should be pronounced. That, however, requires work, it might not be natural to your story, and even if it is, you wouldn't do that for every single character.

In short, no, hard-to-pronounce names do not break immersion.

However, if the names you plan are particularly long, you might find this discussion of long names helpful.

posted almost 6 years ago

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Galastel‭

1885 reputation 81 551 319 3

While it's going to vary between readers whether it bothers them or not I have to say I'm firmly in the camp that it can ruin immersion.

I'm not too worried about whether I "pronounce" a name "correctly" or not - but if the way the name is written doesn't parse easily then I find it incredibly hard going to read.

That said with your example name "Jiolluav" I would probably not have had a problem when reading it - I would likely have just gone straight to the "Jollav" pronunciation your friend used.

posted almost 6 years ago

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motosubatsu‭

165 reputation 1 37 31 0

I don't think strange names break immersion; I think names that cannot be sounded out (correctly or not) break immersion.

"Hermione" can be sounded out. "J'xyx'brtl" is too hard to sound out, and for me would be likely to break immersion every time I see it, because my reading system stumbles over it.

But whether readers get "HER-My-Own" or "HER-Me-Un" or "Her-MY-Oh-Nee" doesn't make a difference, their eyes can glide over "Hermione" without a stumble.

For "Jiolluav" I would probably read "JOLE-Uf", similar to "JO-seph". I wouldn't have a "Zh" sound. In my fiction, names are one, two or three syllables if common (like "Christina"), mostly two syllables. If they need to be longer, I may give them a nickname as well, for dialogue.

Making reading difficult; by using hard to read names or foreign or alien words, by twisting grammar, are ways the text itself can break immersion. Making a reader read a passage more than once just to understand it is (IMO) bad writing.

posted almost 6 years ago

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Amadeus‭

3156 reputation 2 1399 613 37