{"id":13192,"date":"2018-02-01T14:28:06","date_gmt":"2018-02-01T18:28:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=13192"},"modified":"2018-02-01T14:28:06","modified_gmt":"2018-02-01T18:28:06","slug":"baby-naming-issue-the-pronunciation-of-giselle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2018\/02\/01\/baby-naming-issue-the-pronunciation-of-giselle\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Naming Issue: The Pronunciation of Giselle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi, I hope you can help us with a baby name dilemma having to do with pronunciation!<\/p>\n

I am from the U.S.A. and my husband is from South America. He suggested the name “Giselle” for our coming baby girl. I had become familiar with this name from time living in South America and also loved it. In South America it is pronounced “Ji Sel” which I think is beautiful and to me is the most intuitive pronunciation of the way the name is spelled. Here is the dilemma: After researching a bit about the name, I found that the most common pronunciation in the U.S.A. is “Jiz Zel” which I find really unattractive being that it reminds lots of people of the African animal and even worse the association of the first syllable of the name to the vulgar slang word “jizz”. So there is a sector of the U.S. population who would pronounce Giselle “Ji Sel” (Hispanics and I understand French Canadians also pronounce it this way) but most Americans pronounce it Jiz Zel. Could I dare to hope that our daughter could be called “Ji Sel” by others or would she be known and called “Jiz Zel” by most people in the U.S.? This would be so disappointing but should I forget Giselle and look for another name?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

I pronounce it somewhere in between: I say it with a Z sound instead of a soft S, but more like jih-ZELL, with the Z attached to the second syllable, so that I never made a connection to the vulgar slang until reading this letter. I do associate the name with gazelles, but it’s a positive association: beauty, grace, cute ears, etc.<\/p>\n

Wikipedia<\/a> mentions only the Ji-zell pronunciation, but doesn’t even have it with emphasis or phonetic marks so I’m not sure if that counts as a complete entry. Forvo<\/a> gives two different versions, one French and one English, both pronounced with the Z-sound. Inogolo also includes two: jih-ZELL and zhee-SELL. The Baby Name Bible<\/a> says it is either GEE-zah-lah or jiz-ELLE. The Baby Name Wizard says it is ji-ZEHL. It is looking to me as if the correct pronunciation in the U.S. uses the Z sound.<\/p>\n

I knew a Lesley in high school who wanted her name pronounced with a soft S instead of a Z, and she had at best mixed success. Her struggle was complicated by people not really hearing\/noticing the difference. I do think you could get the people closest to you to use the soft S—but if you’ll be living in the U.S., and if you hate the Z pronunciation and it’s going to drive you crazy to hear it, I think you’d be happier choosing another name. I wonder if you’d like Giselle in the middle-name position, so you can still have the name but without hearing it pronounced very often?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi, I hope you can help us with a baby name dilemma having to do with pronunciation! I am from the U.S.A. and my husband is from South America. He suggested the name “Giselle” for our coming baby girl. I had become familiar with this name from time living in South America and also loved […]<\/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-13192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-3qM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13192","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=13192"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13193,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13192\/revisions\/13193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}