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HelpRe: How do YOU pronounce Helena
in reply to a message by Hekate Rose
I knew a Helena, with whom I attended business school in 1995. I can remember asking her how to pronounce her name. I don't remember exactly how I knew it was Helena without knowing how it was pronounced, but somehow I did. I asked her if it was he-LAY-na or HEL-en-a. (If enquiring minds want to know, she pronounced it he-LAY-na, but said she didn't care if it were pronounced HEL-en-a.)
Point being, I never knew if it was he-LAY-na or HEL-en-a and didn't have either pronunciation set in my head as the correct one as opposed to the other. Even now, I don't, and would pronounce it whichever way the bearer wanted it pronounced. You said that there a lot of different ways, but I'm aware of only those two.
Point being, I never knew if it was he-LAY-na or HEL-en-a and didn't have either pronunciation set in my head as the correct one as opposed to the other. Even now, I don't, and would pronounce it whichever way the bearer wanted it pronounced. You said that there a lot of different ways, but I'm aware of only those two.
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The last (English) pronunciation is He-leen-a which is how the capital of Montana is pronounced. Not sure how many people pronounce their name that way though.
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.HEH-leh-na(German, Czech) heh-LEH-na(German) heh-LEH-nah(Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish) i-LEH-nu(European Portuguese) eh-LEH-nu(Brazilian Portuguese) ə-LEH-nə(Catalan) kheh-LEH-na(Polish) HEH-leh-nah(Finnish) HEHL-ə-nə(English) hə-LEEN-ə(English) [key · IPA]
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I was speaking of English pronunciations. I was well aware that there are foreign pronunciations and I could have looked those up myself. I'm not German, Czech, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Portuguese, Brazilian, Catalan, Polish, or Finnish, so I can't be expected to know or consider using those foreign pronunciations. Some of them seem identical to the he-LAY-na or HEL-en-a I already mentioned, anyway. There's just one English pronunciation there I didn't know, the last one, he-LEEN-a (I don't know how to make upside down Es, sorry.) I would not ask a fellow American in the United States if she pronounced her name leaving off the initial H sound or with an initial K sound. That would be silly.
This message was edited 12/15/2019, 1:09 PM
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Well, just because you meet someone in a certain country doesn't mean that's where they were born or that it's where their parents are from. An American Helena with Portugese parents might be called e-le-na or something.
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My Belgian-born mother-in-law, Anny, had to get used to being called AN-ee rather than the ON-ee she'd been called all of her life before immigrating to the US.
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