My mother and I had a discussion the other day about the name Rowan\/Rowen. Neither of us personally knows anyone with the name, or has heard it pronounced by anyone who does. I’ve been assuming a “row your boat” pronunciation, to rhyme with Owen. My mom has been assuming the first part was pronounced as in “ow, I hurt myself,” or as in the word rowdy, or as in Howard.<\/p>\n
I tried to search online, and most of the evidence supports the row-your-boat pronunciation—but many places give the “rowdy”-type pronunciation as a second or alternate pronunciation, if not as a first. It’s additionally complicated because rowan and rowen are both nouns, and their pronunciations may or may not apply to the pronunciation of the name.<\/p>\n
I’m going to put a poll over to the right, with a variety of answers to cover a variety of circumstances: I’d think we’d want a vote from someone who actually knows an actual Rowen or Rowan to carry more weight than a vote from someone who, like my mom and me, is just assuming a pronunciation. [Poll closed; see results below.]<\/p>\n
Poll results for “How Do You Pronounce the Name Rowan?” (506 votes total):<\/p>\n
I know someone; it’s like Owen – 255 votes (50%)
I know someone; it’s like rowdy – 2 votes (0%)
I know at least once pronounced each way – 1 vote (0%)
I don’t know someone; I thought it was like Owen – 245 votes (48%)
I don’t know someone; I thought it was like rowdy – 3 votes (1%)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My mother and I had a discussion the other day about the name Rowan\/Rowen. Neither of us personally knows anyone with the name, or has heard it pronounced by anyone who does. I’ve been assuming a “row your boat” pronunciation, to rhyme with Owen. My mom has been assuming the first part was pronounced as […]<\/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-6248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-1CM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6248","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=6248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6248\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}