OK, how do you pronounce Schiavo?

Re: OK, how do you pronounce Schiavo?


You are right: Skee-ahv-oh

With the accent ont the syllable next to the last

the correct syllable separation is schia-vo

so "ia" is a "dittongo".

I keep hearing the name pronounced Shy-vo, as in Shai-voh, by newscasters. This is quite annoying. I suppose it is what the now famous members of this family in Florida call themselves.

IMO CHIVO.

I think it should depend on the family's decision.

Of course, it originally was pronounced "Skeeahvo" (and that's how is said on Mexican TV).
The Shyvo pronounciation I heard on CNN was a pain to my ears, but...

Pronunciation of foreign last names is difficult for many people, and it often becomes a pain for migrants. People would ask them "How do you write it? Please spell", if they're lucky. If not, people would mispronounce or misspell, or both.

So migrants have the choice of insisting on the correct pronunciation or accommodating to the majority.

I now a guy whose last name is Dvorak, and everyone here, including himself, pronounces "duorak", if he pronounced it correctly (Vorjak) it could be a conundrum to us.

I don't know if there has been some sort of mediatic complain about "Shyvo", but Italians are the last ones in the world with a right to do so. They have terrible trouble pronouncing and spelling family names they're not familiar with, even relatively easy ones. And if you become an Italian citizen, quite probably they'll change your name and italianize it.

You don't even need to become a citizen...

Dechartes = Cartesio
Bayard = Baiardo
Martin Luther = Martin Lutero

really stupid. I'm happy we now try (at last!) to keep the original name

I hear people say
" She-ah-vo"
hmm.. interesting to see how varied it is!

That practice, for famous people, was common worldwide until the late XIX Century (thus, we have Homero, Nicolás Copernico and Julio Verne, in Spanish) and the cnaged names have stayed.
We still say "el principe Carlos", when referring to Camilla's boyfriend. But I can't find examples outside of the royal families.



Was a new law passed?
A friend of mine, Argentinian by birth, had to change his legal name from Carlos Felipe to Carlo Filippo.

It's true that many names were modified when our ancestors showed up here in the US, and I can see this kind of name changing for migrants would be a worldwide phenomenon.