Not that the spelling “m-a-r-i-” is unknown in English … but that “mari” is not an English word on it’s own and thus doesn’t have a pre-memorized go-to default** pronunciation for an English speaker the way “Mary” does.
Succinctly: the go-to pronunciation of “Mary” could lead English speakers to unconsciously analyze “Marylou” in two hunks: “Mary Lou”. And perhaps the spelling “Marilou” avoids triggering that auto-pronunciation of “Mary” for at least some, if not most, English speakers.
Eh … just a theory.
** “default” here meaning “the default within an individual English speaker’s idiolect,” and definitely not “the English language default(!)”.
Technically, in Classical Arabic, the doubled consonant has to be followed by a vowel. These are short vowels that indicate noun declensions and play a role in verb conjugations. In pronunciation nowadays they’re usually ignored, and not even romanized outside of textbooks. The practical result is doubled consonants occurring at the end of a word, despite the theoretical presence of final vowels.
I was recently reading a book in which a guy in the desert encounters a jinn (OK… whatever), but later deals with many “jinni” (not jinn, jinns, jinnu, or any other form which would not have given me pause). Huh? To paraphrase The Name of the Rose, the Author may not know Arabic, but at least he should know that jinn are Arabic (ie a “foreign language” word).
I actually only pronounce Mary Lou and Marilou different due to the I. An I in the middle of a word gets reduced in my accent, but not the Y at the ends of words. (It may be slightly reduced, but it’s still very clearly “ee” *.)
I still would see vowel-consonant-vowel to mean that I use a “long a” in English, which is [e] before /r/.
But I would never connect Mariluz and Marilou or Mary Lou. Mariluz ends in z, which usually means Spanish. And, even without that, the vowel-cononant-vowel-consonant setup makes me think “Latin root,” so I’m going to avoid using the more American A sounds by default.
This actually gives me trouble when it comes to prescription drugs or English Latin (e.g. as used by Lawyers), where I will automatically use a more Romantic pronunciation. For example, it still seems weird to me that “Citalopram” is sigh-TAL-uh-pram (/saɪˈtælə.præm/) instead of sih-TALL-lo-prahm (/sɨˈtɑloprɑm/).
Thank you. That plus the cases of “people trying to choke themselves to death” are why I change the spelling to match the desired pronunciation as closely as the local dialect will allow. I’m just trying to keep the conversation fluid, removing the iceberg that’s the Spanish spelling of my name.
At this point, Nava, would you mind just spelling out (pun intended) what spelling you use in English? It’s unclear to me if you use “MaryLou” and let people pronounce it that way, or have come up with some way to get them to get as close to the Spanish Mariluz as possible.
Also, did this issue factor into your name choice here on the SDMB? Nava seems pretty unambiguous, as long as you don’t mind the English /v/ sound.
I’ve already said: sometimes Marylou, sometimes Marilou, because depending on dialect people pronounce them differently. It changes by location. I’ve had projects in France where people hadn’t seen my name in writing before I joined and I became Marie-Lu (“Lu comme les cookies!”).
And yep. I always choose my usernames to be something that “foreigners” will be able to say easily. Lots of time spent in VoIP environments, lots of time spent explaining to foreigners a name that’s extra-complicated even by Spanish standards… anything that makes life easier for everybody involved is OK in my book!