I stand corrected.
(Must resume studying French…)
My own rather unique first name is a combination of my mother’s middle name and her mother’s first name, but spelled slightly differently. None of my three siblings has a “made up” name. Midwestern middle-European Catholic background.
It’s not similar to how I would say “get”.
Yeah, middle-upper class white people do. Delaney? Elise? Demetrius?
Ok those are REAL names, but as is Jean Bene, it just happens to be a spelled/combined name which is not too rare in of itself.
What about Nigella Lawson? And her sister Thomasina? If I’m not mistaken, there was a third sister, also with a feminized man’s name. And they’re British, not American. They were a pretty prominent family, though.
My, what a broad brush you wield.
No, in the name “Forget” you don’t pronounce the “t”, as I said. (And of course the “g” are different too.) I guess I explained myself badly. What I meant was that in the name “Forget”, the “e” is more open than Sunspace seemed to think. It is this vowel, while if I understand him right, he claimed that it was this vowel.
Oh, and in some dialects of French, the “t” of “Forget” is pronounced. Not in the one I use, though.
See Freakonomics for a more thorough study of how different classes of Americans name their children.
My take on the name JonBenet is that it is more typical of a name given by a lower socioeconomic class than the Ramseys. With wealth like theirs it is usually not felt “necessary” to give the child such a fancy, unique name. Celebrity parents are an exception. My take is that the Ramseys made a bad impression giving a name like that, because it is more typical of a lower-middle class family or of a genuine celebrity couple, neither of which describes them.
I suspect the issue is with which dialect of English is in question. I knew that you were referring to the vowel in “get”, but I don’t think the vowel in the French “Forget” matches the vowel I’d use in the English “get”.
And of course it depends on the dialect of French, as well. In Southern France, I think you would get a close-mid front vowel, since an open-mid vowel wouldn’t be permitted in an open syllable in French dialects influenced by Occitan.
I had a lower middle class farmer uncle named Marvin who named his daughter Marvina. Poor girl.
That’s certainly possible. In my case, I use the same vowel in French “Forget” and in English “get”, but other people may not do the same. Out of curiosity, how would you pronounce these two words?
I don’t know how to explain, because I think the differences are smaller than what could be captured by spelling the words phonetically. It’s just that the mid-open front vowel and mid-close front vowel of English don’t correspond precisely to the French ones, at least to my ear.
Just another data point from a non-mormon white girl who knows people who fall into the same category. They had a girl and named her for her father, Don, and the most favorite aunt, Juanita. This resulted in the moniker of Donita. Everyone else can decide on if whether or not that was a good idea.
I would say “Forget” in French as for-'zhay and “get” in English like “let”, “pet”, “et” "cet"era… “-et” in French as -ay: cachet, buffet,…
Including the French designer on their commercials who says “Do you Tar-zhay?”
At least that one sounds like a name.
Oh, and when I have heard reporters refer to Jon Benet, they say “John Ben-ay”, not “Zhan Ben-ay”.
Sort of. I once saw a picture of a little girl online that had been named Jona Benet. The picture showed the girl all dressed up in a pageant type gown. I’m guessing the parents knew very early on that they would be putting her in pageants since they chose that name for their newborn.
To my ear they are so close that I couldn’t distinguish them. Again, maybe it depends on the dialect used. Or maybe your ear has just more training than mine.
I know for sure that this is not how these words are pronounced in my dialect of French. I’d be curious to know if there are dialects of French where this is the usual pronounciation, which would explain how anglophones came into contact with it. Maybe, as Excalibre suggested, the Occitan-influenced dialects of Southern France do use this pronounciation.