{"id":285371,"date":"2025-07-23T14:10:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T14:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/285371\/"},"modified":"2025-07-23T14:10:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T14:10:12","slug":"american-mum-who-used-british-name-for-son-just-realised-shes-been-saying-it-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/285371\/","title":{"rendered":"American mum who used British name for son just realised she&#8217;s been saying it wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An American mum named Gerby documented her realisation when she learned that she&#8217;d been pronouncing her son&#8217;s name wrong for years after having picked a traditional British name for him<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/1_Tired-desperate-mother-and-baby-crying.jpg\" alt=\"Tired desperate mother and baby crying\" loading=\"eager\"  \/>A mum just learned she&#8217;s been saying her son&#8217;s name wrong (stock image)(Image: Getty Images\/iStockphoto)<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">Names can be a difficult thing to pronounce, especially if you meet someone who has a name from a different part of the <a class=\"TextLink_text-link__dBSS0 TextLink_enabled__dJF3l\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mirror.co.uk\/news\/world-news\/\" target=\"\" aria-label=\"\" tabindex=\"0\" rel=\"noopener\">world<\/a>. Despite this, people still appreciate when you try your best to pronounce their name right, even if it takes you <a class=\"TextLink_text-link__dBSS0 TextLink_enabled__dJF3l\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mirror.co.uk\/news\/us-news\/ive-been-pronouncing-name-wrong-32962816\" target=\"_self\" aria-label=\"\" tabindex=\"0\" rel=\"noopener\">a few tries to get there.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">Besides this, you&#8217;d assume that you&#8217;d be able to pronounces your own <a class=\"TextLink_text-link__dBSS0 TextLink_enabled__dJF3l\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mirror.co.uk\/all-about\/baby-names\" target=\"_self\" aria-label=\"\" tabindex=\"0\" rel=\"noopener\">children&#8217;s names<\/a> right, especially if you were the one who named them in the first place. However, one American <a class=\"TextLink_text-link__dBSS0 TextLink_enabled__dJF3l\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mirror.co.uk\/all-about\/parenting\" target=\"_self\" aria-label=\"\" tabindex=\"0\" rel=\"noopener\">mum <\/a>named Gerby Derby has shared her shock after people started pointing out that she was pronouncing her son&#8217;s name wrong.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">In a <a class=\"TextLink_text-link__dBSS0 TextLink_enabled__dJF3l\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mirror.co.uk\/all-about\/tiktok\" target=\"_self\" aria-label=\"\" tabindex=\"0\" rel=\"noopener\">TikTok <\/a>video, Gerby started to explain the story of how her husband had been adamant that he wanted their first born daughter to be named Samantha, which<a class=\"TextLink_text-link__dBSS0 TextLink_enabled__dJF3l\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mirror.co.uk\/lifestyle\/family\/i-hate-name-husband-picked-33198585\" target=\"_self\" aria-label=\"\" tabindex=\"0\" rel=\"noopener\"> left him naming their first born baby.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">&#8220;He was so convincing that the keepers of the gender at our gender reveal party gave us gifts that said &#8216;congratulations, it&#8217;s a girl. We&#8217;re excited to meet you Samantha&#8217;,&#8221; she said. &#8220;At that point I was locked in. Everybody was calling this baby Samantha.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Content cannot be displayed without consent<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">She went on to say that by her agreeing to the name Samantha, her husband had promised her that she could name every other child they had.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">&#8220;When we got pregnant with out son, I was able to pretty quickly narrow it down to two names &#8211; Theodore and Graham,&#8221; she said, before saying she&#8217;d settled on Graham, which she pronounced as &#8216;Gram&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">The video then continued with Gerby saying they had a third child in heaven, a daughter named Genevieve, which she also named. However, she&#8217;s now pregnant with their fourth child, and asked for help as she was struggling to come up with a name.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">Instead of giving her name suggestions, several viewers instead took to the comment section to point out that she was pronouncing the name &#8216;Graham&#8217; wrong.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">&#8220;it&#8217;s pronounced &#8216;Grey-am&#8217; not &#8216;gram&#8217;,&#8221; one person wrote alongside several cry laughing emojis. A second person said: &#8220;That\u2019s pronounced Gray-uhm, actually :\/.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">Gerby soon made a second video where she shared her shock of realising that she&#8217;d been saying her son&#8217;s name wrong all this time.<\/p>\n<p>Content cannot be displayed without consent<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">&#8220;Am I pronouncing my child&#8217;s name wrong? Am I pronouncing my child&#8217;s name wrong?&#8221; she kept asking her viewers with a confused looked on her face. &#8220;Is it Graham?<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">She went on to pronounced the name in a few different ways before the video ended. The comments soon filled with people who shared their own opinions on how the name should be pronounced.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">&#8220;Every Graham I\u2019ve ever known as pronounced their name Gram,&#8221; one person said. To this, another person explained: &#8220;It\u2019s Gram in the US but Grey-um in the UK, not sure about other English speaking countries tho.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">A third viewer said: &#8220;It&#8217;s a Scottish name, and is pronounced Grey-Um. The &#8216;h&#8217; is silent. And it&#8217;s not GRAM.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">&#8220;I&#8217;ve only ever heard it pronounced &#8220;Grey-um&#8221; or &#8220;Grey-em,&#8221; another person said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">&#8220;It\u2019s your child. You get to decide how\u2019s it\u2019s pronounced. But in the south, it\u2019s gram like the unit of measurement,&#8221; a fifth person said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">To settle the debate, a linguist professor known as Professor Woody has shared that it all comes down to the accents of where you live, as both versions are technically correct.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">&#8220;We have different accents and dialects. We pronounce almost everything differently, including this,&#8221; he explained in<a class=\"TextLink_text-link__dBSS0 TextLink_enabled__dJF3l\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/shorts\/CNTQiJP-imY\" target=\"_self\" aria-label=\"\" tabindex=\"0\" rel=\"noopener\"> a video<\/a>, going on to say that the way English is written is dated and based on one regional accent or dialect, which can make the spelling different from how it&#8217;s now pronounced.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">Baby name expert known as The Baby Fairy agrees with this, saying that there&#8217;s usually a regional and dialectal difference in how you say the name depending on what country, and even what area of that country you&#8217;re in, which can change the name from being one to two syllables.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An American mum named Gerby documented her realisation when she learned that she&#8217;d been pronouncing her son&#8217;s name&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285372,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7708],"tags":[2420,15723,5105,7710,519,448,449,638],"class_list":{"0":"post-285371","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-royals","8":"tag-parenting","9":"tag-baby-names","10":"tag-royal","11":"tag-royal-families","12":"tag-royal-family","13":"tag-royals","14":"tag-tiktok","15":"tag-umm-what"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114902953188912954","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}