{"id":11262,"date":"2015-05-03T10:52:51","date_gmt":"2015-05-03T14:52:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=11262"},"modified":"2015-05-03T11:02:46","modified_gmt":"2015-05-03T15:02:46","slug":"baby-naming-issue-the-pronunciation-of-esme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2015\/05\/03\/baby-naming-issue-the-pronunciation-of-esme\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Naming Issue: The Pronunciation of Esme"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle. I have a pronunciation question for you. Since having another girl recently, my husband and I are on the hunt for the next perfect name in case the next babe is a girl.<\/p>\n

I love the look of Esme. And I always assumed it was pronounced Ehz-me but upon further research it looks like that is more the UK pronunciation where most in the USA go with Ehz-may. I was wondering if you and your readers have met anyone with this name and which pronunciation they went by. Also, I live in Canada… We tend to see similar trends as the USA but I find that sometimes our accents\/pronunciations are slightly different so not sure if there are other fellow Canadians reading that could comment?<\/p>\n

Thanks!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

I have been pronouncing it EHZ-may.<\/p>\n

The Oxford Dictionary of First Names<\/a> doesn’t offer a pronunciation, but lists Esmie and Esmee as variants. Esmie looks to me like support for EHZ-mee, while Esmee could go either way: fianc\u00e9 and fianc\u00e9e are both pronounced with a -SAY, and Esm\u00e9e is the original female version of the name; but -ee would usually be an -ie sound in the United States, almost never -ay.<\/p>\n

The Baby Name Wizard<\/a> lists the pronunciation as EHZ-may. There are some further (differing and agreeing) remarks by commenters here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Inogolo<\/a> lists the pronunciation as ehz-MAY, but notes: “In English this name is sometimes pronounced with the stress on the first syllable, and sometimes with the first syllable as -es-“—in other words, as EHZ-may or ESS-may.<\/p>\n

Esm\u00e9 Raji Codell<\/a>, whose book Educating Esm\u00e9<\/a> I really enjoyed (and I think that was my first encounter with the name), pronounces her name EHZ-may.<\/p>\n

Howjsay<\/a> offers three pronunciations, in this order: ess-MAY\/MEE, ess-sm (what), and EHZ-may\/mee. I listened to it again and again, but the way he pronounces the first one (and to a lesser extent the third one) continues to escape me: he says the vowel almost completely between long-A and long-E.<\/p>\n

Forvo<\/a> has one of each: a speaker from the United Kingdom pronounces it ESS-mee, and a speaker from Australia pronounces it EHZ-may—or really more like ehz-may, with almost equal emphasis.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The name is unusual in the United States (in 2013, it was given to 271 new baby girls), and of course we can’t know from the Social Security data base how parents are pronouncing it, but I wondered if alternate spellings might offer clues. There were 53 new baby girls given the spelling Esmae, which looks to me like an attempt to make the -may pronunciation clear. Another 14 were given the spelling Esmay. Another 38 new baby girls were given the spelling Esmee, which could be an attempt to emphasize a -mee pronunciation, or could be parents who know that Esmee was the original female version (at this point, and in the United States, Esme is the more common spelling, and is used almost exclusively for girls). Another 8 new baby girls were given the spelling Esmi, and another 8 were given Esmie, both of which look like the -mee pronunciation. Another 19 were Ezmae, which looks like -may; 9 were Ezme, which is unclear.<\/p>\n

I wish the polls still worked, because I’ve noticed from past similar posts that the percentages indicated by comments are not necessarily representative of percentages indicated in the polls. But the polls DON’T work, and I haven’t yet found a new one I like, so we will just have to go by comments.<\/p>\n

Do you know an Esme? What country is she from, and how does she pronounce her name?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle. I have a pronunciation question for you. Since having another girl recently, my husband and I are on the hunt for the next perfect name in case the next babe is a girl. I love the look of Esme. And I always assumed it was pronounced Ehz-me but upon further research it looks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-2VE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11262"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11270,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11262\/revisions\/11270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}