Mother claims stranger ‘ruined daughter’s life’ after correcting her name pronunciation

A woman on Reddit says she was lambasted by a mother for teaching her the correct pronunciation of her daughter’s name.

In a recent post on the popular “Am I The A**hole?” subreddit, the unnamed woman, who lives in the UK, explained that she met an American mother and daughter while in A&E (the British version of the ER). The mother said her daughter’s name was “Grain,” which the British woman said was a very unique name that she’s never heard of before.

“She told me that she’s named after her great-grandmother and that it’s an Irish name. At this point, the alarm bells are ringing in my head because I’ve realized that the kid is called Gráinne (generally pronounced as Gro-nyuh, or thereabouts,)” the post read.

“I tried to be very tactful, and I was like, ‘Irish has such an interesting alphabet. How is her name spelled? Irish names can be tricky.’ The kid is called Gráinne. Not Grain.”

She said she decided to tell the mother that her daughter has an “old-school name and a more modern pronunciation.”

“She asked what I meant, and I said ‘Well in Ireland, they typically pronounce it like ‘gro-nyuh.’ Her face went red and [she] said I shouldn’t have said that the pronunciation was wrong in front of the kid because now she’s going to grow up knowing that her name is wrong and feel bad about it.”

The Reddit user profusely apologized, saying the name was nice regardless of which way she pronounces it.

“She told me that I ‘ruined her daughter’s self-esteem’ and that her ‘life [was] ruined’ by me saying that ‘her existence is wrong.’ I didn’t say that, by the way. I said that her name was pronounced atypically,” the Reddit post continued, pointing out that Gráinne was only two years old.

“The conversation was maybe five minutes long, but I managed to ruin this kid’s life. Hindsight says I should have kept my mouth shut and waited for somebody else in this city to say something.”

After posting many people took to the comments defending her decision to correct the mother’s pronunciation.

“You didn’t embarrass the child you embarrassed the parent, who frankly should be embarrassed she named her kid a name she didn’t know how to pronounce,” one comment read. “In reality, you did the kid a favor by pointing this out early on so the mom can deal with it. She would have found out eventually and it could have been when she was old enough to be legitimately embarrassed.”

Another commenter agreed, writing, “The mom seemed surprised by the actual pronunciation and probably could’ve done some more research on the pronunciation before naming her child “grain”. Who in their right mind thinks that ‘grain’ is a family name?

“And everyone knows Irish names have different pronunciations than their spelling. Eoin, Niamh, Siobhan, Padraic, etc… Mom was embarrassed and wanted to make you feel bad. The kid is going to find out one day that it’s pronounced Grainne….”