Aaron vs. Erin pronunciation

[krcit]

Aaron = male
Erin = female

Pronounced differently.

Aa (like the "a" in cat) - ron (with the "o" sounding like the one in "rod") Stress on "ron"

E (like the "e" in bed) - rin (short "i" sound, like in "ring"). Stress on the "rin"

NY here. Totally different names.

 

[sparklynails23]

Aaron = male. Erin = female, both pronounced air-in.

Agree.

My son is Aaron. Luckily, there aren't several Aaron's in his class and on his soccer team, like Zack and Jake-- not that I don't like those names, too.

 

[RitaZ.]

Simply because most people are too lazy (yes, really) to enunciate correctly doesn't make a pronunciation or usage correct. Especially everyone who went through the entire public school system in this country - and most particularly native English speakers - learned proper pronunciation. That includes long and short vowels, diphthongs, vowels followed by a consonant...

It's not laziness; it's called dialectal variation.

 

[mickeydotcom]

I'm an Erin. Erin/Aaron/Erinn/Eryn all pronounced the same.

 

[Scurvy]

In all reality, anyone's name is pronounced the way their parents intended the name to be pronounced. So your really rude implication that anyone that pronounces something different than you do is lazy, isn't really correct.

I have known kids with these names and it just depends on how the parent pronounces as to how I say it. Otherwise, I pronounce them the same.

Its like my brother's name--Dwayne. Some people name their son Dwayne and pronounce it with a long e (Deewayne) some do not add an e sound at all. (my brother's name was without the long e sound)

It should be the preference of the parent.

There are lots of people who don't pronounce names the way they ought to be pronounced, given the spelling. In some cases maybe it is because of laziness, sometimes it's an accent, and sometimes they just don't know any better. I agree that a name should be pronounced the way a parent (or later, the child) says it should be pronounced. Someone could name their kid Jack and say it is pronounced "Toaster" and the only appropriate thing to do is to call poor little Jack "Toaster" until he either changes the spelling of his name to match the pronunciation or starts pronouncing it the way it's spelled. That said, it still doesn't mean that it is correct to pronounce the letters J-A-C-K as Toaster.

I've met someone who used to be furious that people mispronounced her name so often. Her name was spelled Sheila. She swore it was pronounced "Sheena". Not that she went by Sheena, but that the correct pronunciation of the letters S-H-E-I-L-A was "Sheena". Then there is the mother I met who is furious when people mispronounce her son's name. He is named Marquis and if you don't realize it's supposed to be pronounced Mark-weece then she thinks you are an idiot.

Sometimes - as with Aaron or Barry - the variations in pronunciation are fairly minor and don't really matter. But the fact that some people tend to pronounce a word a certain way doesn't mean that's actually the correct pronunciation of that word, even if it is their name. Of course no one should tell them they are either pronouncing or spelling their name wrong, but if the spelling and pronunciation don't match then one or the other is incorrect.

 

[DeaverTex]

Mrs. Tex is from Michigan, and she claims that Erin and Aaron are pronounced identically. (Well, what can you expect from a Yankee?)

If we've gotten sidetracked onto Mary, my mom and her mother always pronounced it with a long "a". I always thought that was odd, but then they also pronounced Sarah with the first "a" long. Both of them were from the Texas Hill Country (Smithville, not too far from Austin.)

 

[MichelleVW]

Well I took a poll at work and we all said that Mary/merry/marry, very/vary, hairy/Harry, and Barry/berry sounded the same. One from Ohio, one from Texas and one from San Diego!

 

[frndshpcptn]

I think it depends on where you are from. I am from the south, they are all pretty much pronounced the same. I have many friends from up north and I know that they would pronounce them differently, I can hear it in my head. So I guess what I am saying is if I heard a distinct difference in the two. Barry/berry and Aaron/Erin. I just think the person has a northern accent and nothing else. Around here Aaron/Erin are pronounced the same. We have a very good friend named Barry, and he pronounces it sounding like Berry, he is VERY southern. Southern gentleman accent. Again, I think that is the difference. Like like people formEngland say pasta differently from us, us should like the "a" in the word cat.

Is this post saying the word "pasta" is pronounced with the same "a" as in cat?

 

[EMom]

Is this post saying the word "pasta" is pronounced with the same "a" as in cat?

I don't know. My head hurts. Berry and Barry the same? This Southerner doesn't get it. Then again, I would never call a "Larry" by "Lerry." Growing up I had a friend who pronounced "married" like "merried" and it drove me nuts. "They got merried." ACK!!!!!! Where we grew up, it was mArried.

 

[shoney]

We all speak a bit differently depending on where we are from.

Usually people can pick me out of crowd....
"I wake up in the morning and let out the dawg before I have cawfee. Yes I am from Lawngisland"

 

[Phatoomch]

I had the same issue as a child; it was especially an issue with the way that I said "Tuesday" for some reason. I ended up essentially living my life split down the middle for a few years: I used one set of rules at home and one at school, especially when it came to table manners. (By the time I hit HS my teachers no longer cared about things like that, but my mother still did, and she didn't suffer disobedience gladly. Mum's way prevailed.)

I'll never forget the time in 2nd grade when my father took a dictionary to a teacher meeting to prove to the teacher that it was correct for me to add those extra u's to words like colour.

I just cannot get out of the habit of the 'u'. I am in the US now so I should spell (when conversing with other Americans) their way .... but it just looks mis-spelt to me

 

[nchulka]

I pronounce them the same. I was wondering something a bit different though. Do most people prefer the name Aaron or Erin? We had DD first and never even considered the name Erin for her. The next year when DS was born we named him Aaron. I love Aaron for a boy, but don't care much for Erin for a girl. Is that strange or do most prefer it for one gender or the other? I'm wondering why I feel this way considering they are exactly the same name

 

[Phatoomch]

I pronounce them the same. I was wondering something a bit different though. Do most people prefer the name Aaron or Erin? We had DD first and never even considered the name Erin for her. The next year when DS was born we named him Aaron. I love Aaron for a boy, but don't care much for Erin for a girl. Is that strange or do most prefer it for one gender or the other? I'm wondering why I feel this way considering they are exactly the same name

But they're not .... or are they *raises eyebrow*

I love the name Aaron (I say it Air-ron*) but not keen on Erin (I say it Eh-rin*)

*Remembering though, to say it with a British accent if wondering how I say it because it sounds totally different. We say our vowels very differently.

 

[shoney]

I pronounce them the same. I was wondering something a bit different though. Do most people prefer the name Aaron or Erin? We had DD first and never even considered the name Erin for her. The next year when DS was born we named him Aaron. I love Aaron for a boy, but don't care much for Erin for a girl. Is that strange or do most prefer it for one gender or the other? I'm wondering why I feel this way considering they are exactly the same name

Well based on the numerous posts...they aren't the same name at all in certain areas!

 

[Mandychelle79]

Pronounced the same

I typically think Erin as a girl, Aaron as a boy, but I know a girl named Aaron and another one that was Aaryn.

 

[disney4us2002]

I pronounce them the same. I was wondering something a bit different though. Do most people prefer the name Aaron or Erin? We had DD first and never even considered the name Erin for her. The next year when DS was born we named him Aaron. I love Aaron for a boy, but don't care much for Erin for a girl. Is that strange or do most prefer it for one gender or the other? I'm wondering why I feel this way considering they are exactly the same name

Personally, I like them equally but as middle names more than first. Some names to me just sound like middle names - also, Anne, Michelle, Sue, Wayne, Lee, etc. Maybe it's just what we're used to hearing, lol. My best friend's son is Christopher Aaron so I think middle name.

Not in the same family exactly but this topic of pronunciation made me think about my niece, Megan. My bil is extremely picky that her name is pronounced "Meg an" so that the Meg rhymes with beg. Many people pronounce megan with a long a sound; similarly, people pronounce egg with a long a sound. They are very close to me but he hates it when people say Maygan.

 

[cornflake]

Its an international English thing. Above is how I pronounce those words and I don't think they sound similar as a PP suggested, they are distinctly different to me and that is because I am British - our schools use the Oxford English Dictionary.

However, when I hear an American say those words, they do sound very similar. Like I said in my previous post, pronuniciation was a problem for my daughter when she started school here.

There is no right or wrong. One is the English way, one is the American English way

I think this is because you're hearing southern Americans pronounce them. Here, most everyone I know pronounces them the way you'd think - with a distinction between Mary/merry/marry, Barry/berry, Aaron/Erin, etc. They don't sound the same at ALL, they're entirely different, easily distinguishable words.

I think it's funny that of all the name pronounciation things that have come up, no one has mentioned Carolyn/Caroline. Those people get more peeved than anyone over that difference!

 

[Irishdisneylover]

Not in the same family exactly but this topic of pronunciation made me think about my niece, Megan. My bil is extremely picky that her name is pronounced "Meg an" so that the Meg rhymes with beg. Many people pronounce megan with a long a sound; similarly, people pronounce egg with a long a sound. They are very close to me but he hates it when people say Maygan.

My name is Megan also pronounced meg-an, it drives me absolutely crazy when people call me maygan. It's a totally different name.

 

[Anne34]

Boy, that's kind of rude. Accents/dialects vary throughout the country. Seems to me that *most* people say them very similarly, except for people from the Northeast. My college linguistics professor said I had no regional accent (It wasn't a compliment. He considered me "linguistically impoverished" because of it ). I say the words VERY similarly.

And, for the record, I learned in school that marry/merry and berry/bury and vary/very were homophones.


Me, too. I don't think I pronounce them *exactly* the same, but it's close enough that I'd you'd probably need to depend on context to figure them out.

(I think I pronounce Mary and marry the same. Merry is ever-so-slightly different, but not enough to really count.)

I totally agree with you. I think the people in the NE say thier vowels differently than much of the rest of the country. As I stated before -- there is no difference here in the midwest. I was also taught those words (and more) were homorphones. Maybe our teachers were wrong too??!!

 

[aprilgail2]

I've only ever heard them pronounced the same. I've had lots of Aaron's/Erin's in my life and they've all pronounced them the same.

I have never heard Aaron and erin pronounced the same way ever! They are two very different names LOL

Well I took a poll at work and we all said that Mary/merry/marry, very/vary, hairy/Harry, and Barry/berry sounded the same. One from Ohio, one from Texas and one from San Diego!

Come on- none of those words are pronounced like the others!!! They are all pronounced differently!