The worst is when you read a book or series when you're young and pronounce it in your mind one way. Then they make a movie or something and it's pronounced very different, and you end up just staying mad about it every time you hear the other version.

Ah yes, Menzobananazan

And then you listen to the audiobook and realize it's just a super fucked up way of spelling steve

Her-me-own

When you talk with someone about that book you've both read and realize that you both have a very different pronunciation of a character's name.

My personal favorite is when you think your brain is pronouncing a coherent guess at it until the first time you try to say it aloud and realize your folly.

Thom.

Is it "tom" or do I make a TH sound, so it sorta sounds like "thumb?" 🤔

I've heard that people who were born completely deaf can read much faster than hearing people, because they don't have to pronounce the words in their head in order to process them.

Numuhukumakiaki'aialunamor

The mining gnomes are the worst. And no I won't attempt to spell them.

No such problems, when your native language uses phonetic alphabet! Is the pronounciation like the author intended then? Likely not, but you can still pronounce every word, without having to think.

I find this weirdly sad. I always tried to understand the name of the character and how it may be pronounced (I'm seriously going to include a glossary with IPA for all proper nouns if I ever produce anything for real publication). To me it's a part of the world-building and I almost recoil at just replacing it with nonsense.

Coriolanus, CORIOLANUS?? illegible and like come on, the author ended the name with ANUS and was like yes that’s perfect?? My daughter read the whole book before she realized his name wasn’t Cornelius cause her brain auto corrected it to a real name

Tserendolgor, Prepotente, and Kamakanamakamaemaikalani

[Huge thanks to Jeff Hays]

I'm French Canadian and we used to read Archie as a bathroom rag and I'd rather not say how I pronounce Jughead and Weatherbee even still to this day. On another note I remember being happily surprised Drizzt had a cameo in the original Baldur's Gate ii game. My friend said you could scum save and roll stealing his very powerful swords. Never took the time to do it though (wasn't a thief).

Not sure if I’ve ever related to a post this much and I’ve been on the internet since dial up.

Borsk Fey'lya

Ysalimir

Mitth'raw'nuruodo

Timothy Zahn has Lucas's flair for naming. But he really doesn't give a damn if you can say it out loud or not. At least he's self aware enough that the last one is canonically unpronounceable to most beings of other species.

Recently read a book about chernobyl, and this was at least 50% of the Russian names for me

I don’t know who it is or from what story, but that would be aliased as Dristo Durden in my mind.

He had to be localized with "r" and "zz" interchanged in Russian due to "drist" root being related to diarrhea.

(But not unpronounceable)

Let go of ma buddy Drizzle Fo'Shizzle!

Harkonnen?