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Re: Pronunciation becoming more prevalent
A neighbor of mine growing up was Stephen, and his parents always corrected people 'It's STEF-an (long 'a')'. I haven't seen him in 15 years but I always had trouble thinking of the 'ph' spelling as 'STEEV-en'.
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In the past 3 years it has been intresting being a 'Stephen' I knew another guy through a friend of mine with the same spelling and insisted it was 'STEF-en' when people read his name they would say 'STEEV-en' I however usually 'STEEV-en' have also been adressed as 'STEF-en' when my name read. It has been happening more often. I got tired of correcting people and decided to start acquiring the pronunciation. I've never really thought about it but I can even use my own name as an alias instead of going by 'Ed' which is my middle name given by my father.
I've generically went by 'Steve' though.
Usually people say'STEF-an' or 'STEF-ahn' for Stephan and rarely even pronouced 'STEEV-an' although not in the pronunciation icons.
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