Just how the @#$% do you pronounce “Hermione”?
What is the derivation of this name?
Did Rowlings make it up out of whole cloth?
Her-my-oh-knee, is how it sounds in the movie.
No I have heard of several people called Hermione in the UK. The name as far as I can tell comes from the Book of Acts where the prophetess St. Hermione is mentioned.
Also, in book four, she spells it out for Krum - “Her-my-oh-nee,” and I think the emphasis goes on “my.” It’s an unusual name, but it wasn’t made up - there was an actress named Hermione Gingold, who was in The Music Man, Gigi, and Bell, Book, and Candle, among others.
I looked here and found this:
Hermione Lee is a leading biographer of Virginia Woolf and Willa Cather, and has been a frequent broadcaster on BBC radio.
And Hermione Baddeley. Played in a number of movies including The Secret of Nimh and Shadow Chasers
Jim Dale, who does the audio books (and does a wonderful job), pronounces it “Her-mah-nee”.
Regards,
Shodan
And who could forget Hermione Baddeley.
Zebra
Yeah! Mrs. Naugatuck ruled!
(She was Maude’s maid to those not in the know).
When Krum was calling Hermione “Hermy-own” my husband realized that he was mentally mispronouncing the name the whole time.
Julie
goddess–me too. I pronounced it “Hemy-own” too until I saw the movie. 
IDBB
I read it as “Her-me-own” until GoF(?), when Ron has a mouthful of food and Rowling phonetically spells out the name as Ron tries to talk to her. I re-read it a couple of times before I realized what it was.
I wonder if Rowling did that so people would know how to pronounce it?
I notice that most of the people in this thread who specify their location and have had problems with the name are USAers.
Hermione Norris - the blonde one in Cold Feet says she was delighted to see Harry Potter books becoming so popular, as it meant that people would finally start pronouncing and spelling her name properly. Her-my-ohnee
And she’s English, so it obviously ain’t all that popular over there either.
Actually, when I first saw the name in the book, I asked my mother how to pronounce it
That wouldn’t be so bad, but I’m 35
:smack:
I wondered if this was a dig at her American readers, who have likely never heard of that name (You’ll never hear it in the USA).
I seem to remember it being put in specifically because Rowling had heard so many requests on how to pronounce her name (and because so many were mispronouncing it). Makes sense. I’ve seen some authors have a pronunciation key at the front of their books so you know how to say/read the names.
…well, I gather in a few years there will be quite a few of them in our kindergartens.
Then there’s Hermione Bagwa, the blond waitress in Attack of the Clones.
[bizarro boards]
Why are there no Harry Potter threads in Cafe Society?
[/bizarro boards]
Hermione’s name was pronounced by herself in GoF. I used to pronounce it Herm-ee-own. until corrected by millitant-fans in alt.fan.harry-potter
I only knew how to pronounce it because of Hermione Gingold. Now if someone could just tell me how to pronounce “Gingold”…