How do you Brits get "rafe" from "Ralph" and

Where’s lieu when you need him?

I gather that this is true. A friend knew his mother Jennifer Lash, who died in 1993 before Fiennes was well known internationally. The first time she heard his name pronounced as Rafe she thought it was a mistake as Lash had always, many years before, called him Ralph.

I’d always assumed it’s just how posh people pronounce Ralph – the upper classes do like to make themselves feel special, and the Fiennes family is supremely posh.

I don’t know any normal person who pronounces it Rafe.

Stop right there.

I’ve heard the odd prononciatyions of “Ralph” and “lieytenant” and even Featherstonehaugh and Cholmondeley, but I’ve neve even heard a suggestion of anyone pronouncing “house” like “mice”. I have a hard time even imagining it.
It’s as if you said someone pronounced “automobile” so it rhymes with “hydrant”.

The Guardian has heard of it.

From your linked article:

It gets weirder and weirder “Kize Mee” for “Cows Moo”?* "hydrant is starting to sound more like “automobile”.

*and “famously”? I guess we don’t hear about it, out here in the sticks.

Same in Lancashire.

Just listen to the Rev. Ian Paisley for examples of this. Pretty common and the standard go-to sterotype for anyone mimicking a N.I. accent.

"I want a Sandwich…and I want it niya!

Don’t fret about it. The UK and British isles in general are supremely rich and weird when it comes to accents.

So did I at first, but. . . .

I could imagine “house” being pronounced with two syllables as something like “HI-uhs”. In certain parts of my neck of the woods, I’ve heard a short a sound, which I think is the first part of the diphthong pronounced as a long i, in words like “gas” and “half”, which to some speakers would be rendered as “gice” and “hife.” I wouldn’t say that’s common, but it wasn’t unusual in older speakers back in the day. ETA, which is similar to the Ian Paisley’s accent is rendered above.

You talk to your wife’s piano about name pronunciation?

Me too. All my Ralphs are Ralph, and all my Rafes are short for Rafael, Raffy is short for Rafael too.

We’re talking about people who can rhyme “eye” and “symmetry”. Who knows what they’ll do?

Without looking it up and sussing it out only from Standard American Stupid, I think it would go.

Scott
Scotty
Scottay! (as in something your stupid friends call you)
Tay! (shortened)
Taye (affected)

The got it from Featherstonehaugh.

It was sometimes done that way, for example one of my own middle names is actually a surname. My last name is a very common surname (let’s call it Smith) and my last middle name is a less common (let’s say Bradbury), but not rare surname. All the males (and sometimes the females) through that lineage have names along the lines of: James Henry Bradbury Smith. The name originated in Gloucester sometime in the early 19th century (or may be a little earlier) when two locally fairly prominent families married (the Bradburys and the Smiths). The Bradbury name was preserved as a middle name.

As the the Bradburys and the Smiths who were partners in a firm called Bradbury Smith (which actually still exists today as part of another firm) there have been a quite a number of architects with the Bradbury Smith name in the UK (well not really as I’ve changed the names) and there’s still a few architects with the Bradbury Smith name around today in the UK who are distant relatives. Sometimes the Bradbury Smith name is hyphenated as Bradbury-Smith, most times it isn’t.

Coincidentally there was also an unrelated (as far as I know) family in the USA with the same Bradbury Smith name, which means that there’s a number of people in the USA with the name. Even more coincidentally they were also architects and engineers specializing in building bridges.

This from a country where they can pronounce “nuclear” as “nookyulur”.

Not a real person, but in The Thorn Birds, it’s mentioned that Father Ralph’s name is pronounced as Rafe.

I noticed while looking him up that he married Idina Menzel, and they have a son. I can’t help but wonder what color he is…

ETA: Okay, that sounds unpardonably racist. What I meant, was… look up Menzel’s most famous role and work it through.

In case this is serious, it’s pretty easy. Eu makes the french u sound, which is corrupted to the English oo sound since we don’t have mixed vowels as phonemes. The i would make a y (IPA [j]) sound. However, ly ([lj)] is a difficult sound to use to start a word, so the y ([j]) gets dropped. The same thing happens with many accent for words like “new” (which can end like few or goo depending on the accent.)

So it goes from lieutenant to lyoo-tenant to loo-tenant.

Thanks for the explanation.

I personally pronounce it Let-tenant… I don’t exagerate the ‘left’