Why can no one pronounce this name, again?
@emanate https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/chalcedony
We actually _accept_ all four pronunciations, though the first is canonical. (For a brief period early on we used the fourth and opposite one, with soft ch and 1&3 stress, but we normalized to M-W's preference after that.)
@emanate Or all six I guess if you count that last vowel distinction. But what people mostly do is Instant Confound. :-(
@chalcedony @emanate If I'm reading the symbols right I've been using the 3rd one internally. ^^'
That's good to know though, correcting now.
@KawaSeadrake @emanate ◽ Hee. 💜 The original was kind of a playful gripe, not a Serious Thing, just since the tone might not've been clear.
The fun part is that the same confound happens whether people encounter it written, spoken, or both at the same time. o..o
◾ We've half-joked that it just seems to be a general curse on our whole line that we inevitably pick names no one can spell or pronounce, even when notionally trying not to. c..c
@chalcedony to my shame as a geologist it never occurred to me to look up the official spelling...
... partially because everyone I asked pronounced it differently.
@icefox ◾ I mean that's why we accept multiple variants of it. (You mean “official pronunciation”?) Heck, like Illum was saying, we used one of the other variants before too.
But most people we've encountered don't produce _any_ recognizable variant of it on first reading/hearing. They produce “cl—kl—cha—gh—??? *awkward face*” and it's like “is this going to lead to us being someone who gets slightly subconsciously avoided because saying our name is impossible or”
@chalcedony Yeeeeees, offical pronunciation. I should sleep.
Don't worry you're too adorable to subconsciously avoid. (Another sign I should sleep.)
@chalcedony
Kal-see-doe-nee? :-)