Perhaps is should be pointed out that the novel that the opera was based on was "Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship", published by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in 1795, where the character Mignon is first introduced as an "androgynous child" before it is clear that she is female. So though Mignon was a French word, as a given name its origin is in Germany.
I think this name is pronounced like the word chignon, where the g is silent, almost like saying minion, but the last syllable is pronounced like yawn.To basically put it, min-YAWN. But then again, I could be wrong.
Mignon Eberhart was a writer of mystery novels. She was awarded the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America, and she also served as the president of that organization. Some of the titles to her books are "Two Little Rich Girls, "Murder in Waiting," and "Danger Money." She lived from 1899-1996.
Mignon Nevada was a British-American opera singer famous in the late 1800s, early 1900s. She was named "Mignon" after the opera, which was written by her parents' friend Ambroise Thomas. She is most famous for playing Ophelia in "Hamlet: The Opera" in 1910.
― Anonymous User 3/17/2015
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Pronounced mee-nyoh[ng], the [ng] being a nasal sound we don't have in English. (source: I'm married to a Frenchman, and have lived in Paris for almost a decade).
Here in France, only small cuddly pets are given Mignon as a name. Eventually though, even animals outgrow it and are renamed. My mother-in-law's once cute little kitten grew to become a fat bad-tempered demon who hisses at everyone, so he went from being Mignon to Timimi, with the only vestige of Mignon being the -mimi at the end.
U.S. Representative for South Carolina's 6th congressional district, Jim Clyburn, has a daughter named Mignon L. Clyburn. Mignon was appointed to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 2009.
I went to school with a girl named Mignon, but she always went by the name Mindy. One day I asked her how she came to be called Mindy because it's nowhere close to the name Mignon. She said when she was little people would butcher her name so much (mig-non), she insisted she be called Mindy because it was simpler and people would pronounce it right every time. When she turned 18, she changed her name to Mindy.
"Mignon" is masculine; "Mignonne" is feminine. Plus, not many non-French speakers would know what "mignon/mignonne" means and associate it with the steak; I still think of the steak, even though I speak French to a degree. And naming somebody "cute" sounds a bit odd (with exceptions to "Bella", "Linda", "Callista", "Alan", and the like).
It's hard, as a child, growing up with a middle name that you can't even pronounce. It wasn't until I was in fifth grade that I learned how to pronounce it. Then, in high school, I learned that this is actually the masculine form of "cute". But no one in America's going to know. I really appreciate having this as a part of my name now simply because I have never met another girl with a first name of Mignon. I never got the "filet mignon" joke, though. I always had people pronounce it as "Mig-non", which drives me insane.
It's a weird name from anyone's point of view who has taken French or speaks it. I took French for three years in school, and this word came up several times. Many people would surely mispronounce it, and it doesn't sound all that cute that way.