I used to find
Maria bland since I've known many and there are many
Maria's in the Mexican side of my family. But as I've gotten older I've come to like the name
Maria partially because it is a family name. Plus it has a beautiful sound.
I've never cared for the name
Mariah partially because I don't care for the singer and truthfully I just don't like the sound of it. But if you like the sound of it then it will be much better to just spell it
Mariah.
Almost every teacher your child has will mispronounce it if you spell
Mariah as
Maria and every person she introduces herself to will assume that it is spelled
Mariah. It doesn't matter that
Maria used to be pronounced the same way as
Mariah in England a long time ago, basically every American will mess up your child's name.
Maybe your kid will be fine with that but most people I know with easily confused names either get occasionally annoyed having to explain their name or they just always have down right hated having to explain their name. You might think oh it won't happen often but my name is
Marisa and no matter how clearly I pronounce it half the time people mishear me thinking I said
Melissa or something else and when they see my name they fairly often mispronounce it the Spanish way. I've even had a teacher who often confused my name with
Maria. I've had a couple of people who thought my name was spelled Merissa and some people who have thought that my name was Amarisa because I said uh before I told them my name. Personally I only occasionally get annoyed because most people figure it out after explaining once or twice but on the rare occasion after the third or fourth time the person still thinks that my name is
Melissa that is when I get frustrated. With how similar
Mariah and
Maria is if you do what you want and spell
Mariah as
Maria I feel fairly certain that your child will have to explain their name even more than I have.
You are definitely wrong that it is on other people to get your child's name right, people have a hard time at least in the US dealing with names or pronunciations that they aren't used to. It ends up being the owner of the name's issue to deal with, they might decide that they don't care if people mispronounce and spell their name wrong or it might bother them a lot. It will be something that they have to deal with, it won't matter much to the other person.
All that said it will be your child so you should do what you want with their name. I don't control you and you can spell it however you feel. Although if you spell your child's name
Maria I would not be surprised if they will choose on their own to spell it
Mariah since it is only one letter different and it will save them from a lot of confusion and explanation. Or they might go the other way choosing to use the normal English pronunciation for
Maria. I know that eventually I just started to let it go on the occasions when people use the Spanish pronunciation of my name rather than the English pronunciation. It's close enough and it can get exhausting sometimes having to correct people. All that said I love my name even if it is the occasional source of annoyance and even though I used to hate the Spanish pronunciation of
Marisa I've come to love both pronunciations. Really I just hate when people call me
Melissa - that is something I will never get used to.
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Favorite Names:
Vivian,
Aurora,
Hazel,
Fiona,
Sabrina, Citrina,
Josephine,
Maeve,
April,
Dorothea,
Althea,
Artemis,
Delphina,
Frida,
Luna,
Iris,
Marguerite, Cascadia
Ciaran,
Rowan,
Brendan,
Malcolm,
Cedar,
Robin,
Julian,
Tristan,
Arthur,
Magnus,
Felix,
Cedric,
Adrian,
Xavier,
Connor,
Silas,
GavinThis message was edited 10/24/2017, 1:56 AM