How do you say it? [How to pronounce Cecil]

[Hari_Seldon]

@colinfred

I’m British so always read it “Sess-ill”, even though I know that Zotti and most of the US pronounce it See-sill. I normally adapt the pronunciation of things to fit people, but See-sill just sounds ugly and wrong.

Well, if Ed Zotti says See-sill, I would regard that as definitive.

I had a colleague who pronounced his name sess-ill, but he was Canadian born.

[Common_Tater]

Years ago my dad, famous in family circles for purposeful mis-pronunciation and mangling of words and phrases at times, would say “hand me a pack of Pall-Malls” yet pronounce it something much closer to “Pell Mells”, I’d no idea until years after that that this is actually “correct”. I thought he was being silly again.

Cecil B. DeMille’s pronunciation probably should be correct for everyone (except Cecil Adams).

[gnoitall]

The correct pronunciation of a person’s name is however the person wants the name pronounced.

/thread

[Beckdawrek]

@Cecil_Adams tell us.

[Yllaria]

@What_Exit

Like See-Sill, just like Beany and Cecil

I would take this Cecil to be definitive. That’s Cecil the Sea-Sick Sea Serpent. So it has to be Sea-sill.

[BobLibDem]

I favor SEE-sill, just like that your obedient serpent, Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent.

[carnut]

This. I perceive no difference between the two.

[BigT]

@MrAtoz

Almost certainly. And, to be a bit more serious, the funny thing about pronunciations is that you often hear what you expect to hear, and it can be difficult to perceive regional differences that are outside of your own dialect. For example, of those four audio samples, I hear three of them as having a “short o,” rather than a “schwa” sound, in the first syllable. Number three is the outlier for me.

For me, it’s not even necessarily that I can’t hear it, but that I consider both to be variations on the same sound. The first syllable is not stressed, and unstressed ‘short o’ very often sounds like a schwa. It’s called unstressed vowel reduction.

Stress and vowel reduction in English

[burpo_the_wonder_mutt]

I have it on good authority that Mrs. Adams pronounces it, “Jackass.”