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14 Stars Finally Explained How to Properly Pronounce Their Names

Mispronouncing first and last names is a fairly common problem. The most common example of this is when professors present diplomas to the graduates. To avoid this, modern universities utilize various tricks. One of them has students write down the pronunciation of their own name so that no one makes a mistake in the future. And they’re not the only ones to do this; celebrities have been known to do it, too.

1. Adele

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Adele is very close to her fans. The singer never hides her feelings from them; she often shares her thoughts in interviews and likes to organize fan meetings. At one of these meetings, Adele thanked a fan who pronounced her name properly. It turns out that the singer’s name is pronounced “uh-dale,” not “ah-dell” as most of us are used to.

2. Chrissy Teigen

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Chrissy, a happy mom-of-three and a model, is prepared to accept the mispronunciation of her unusual family name, which she inherited from her Norwegian father. It’s unlikely that anyone can pronounce her surname, “tie-gen,” correctly without stumbling on the first syllable.

3. Taylor Lautner

The star of the Twilight saga not only dispels the myths that have surrounded him thanks to the franchise, but also draws people’s attention to the pronunciation of his surname. Many get the first syllable wrong, pronouncing it as “lot.” In fact, the first syllable of the actor’s surname rhymes with “out” and sounds more like “lowt-ner.”

4. Alicia Silverstone

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The mispronunciation of her name bothers not so much the actress herself, but her sweet mom: “It doesn’t bother me though! But my sweet mama didn’t like it...so for her...get it right!” Having given her daughter the beautiful name Alicia at birth, she never imagined that in the future people would pronounce it “Alee-Sha” instead of the intended “ali-SEE-yuh.”

5. Saoirse Ronan

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The actress of the acclaimed screen adaptation of the novel Little Women decided to set the record straight and began her Saturday Night Live appearance with instructions on how to spell and pronounce her Irish name. It means “freedom” and is pronounced “sur-sha.”

6. Ian Somerhalder

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Before pronouncing the full name of the star of The Vampire Diaries, it’s worth listening to how the actor himself does it. It turns out his last name has a slight echo of summer in it, as it’s pronounced “summer-halder” rather than “somer-halder” as many are used to.

7. Gal Gadot

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In an interview, Wonder Woman of the Year admitted that 60% of the time, when pronouncing her surname, people make the mistake of not pronouncing the letter “T,” instead saying “gadoh.” The correct pronunciation would be with the “T” clearly audible: “gah-dote.” Moreover, it should sound “soft.”

8. Jake Gyllenhaal

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The actor doesn’t take it personally that his Swedish surname is often mispronounced and jokingly says that it will only be pronounced correctly in his homeland, or in Ikea. Given the phonetic nature of the Swedish language, it sounds more like “yeel-en-hall” rather than “jill-en-hal,” as many tend to say.

9. Raven-Symoné

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To eliminate the difficulty of pronouncing her full name, the Disney star decided to keep just the first part. But that wasn’t so simple either. It turns out that until 2023, the part of her name was mispronounced, with many saying “sim-moan,” when it should, in fact, be “see-mon-ye.”

10. Kesha

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The singer’s stage name was invented by her mother. She said it derives from a Hungarian family name, which according to Hungarian lexical norms sounds like “ke-tu-cha.” But this sounds too complicated for a media personality, so they decided to simply shorten it to “keh-shuh.” Nevertheless, there are still erroneous variations of the pronunciation, which the singer ends up having to correct.

11. Paul Mescal

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The actor’s surname is close to the name of the drink, so he takes mistakes in its pronunciation light-heartedly. In an interview, he said that his surname should be pronounced with a softened “s” and an “uh”: “meh-skull.”

12. Tove Lo

The singer with Swedish roots also regularly hears wrong pronunciations of her name. She was quick to lift the veil of mystery, though, and taught fans how to say it correctly: “too-vay-LOO.”

13. Haim

When the Haim sisters formed a rock band, they didn’t think too much about what to call it, and settled on using their last name. But that didn’t make life any easier for the fans, because pronouncing the band’s name is a real challenge. Some call them “haym,” others “heim.” On their official TikTok channel, the rock sisters were quick to clarify the matter and finally told everyone how to pronounce their last name: “high-um.”

14. Brendan Fraser

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On the wave of his newly rising popularity, the actor decided to remind everyone how to correctly pronounce his surname. In December 2022, during an interview, Adam Sandler pronounced his surname the same way you would pronounce “Frasier.” The future Oscar winner didn’t like that, so he came up with a rhyme to avoid the mistake in the future: “Fraser rhymes with ’razor’.

Preview photo credit ROBYN BECK/AFP/East News, Jae C. Hong/Invision/East News
Cheery/People/14 Stars Finally Explained How to Properly Pronounce Their Names
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