Michelle Teheux
1 min readJun 11, 2024

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Well, you're just wrong here.

Names from different cultures can be INCREDIBLY hard for people not in that tradition to pronounce. I have absolutely no clue how to pronounce your name and would need you to coach me through it numerous times. This is is not out of lack of openness. It's that I didn't grow up pronouncing African names or words and the pronunciation ruls are unfamiliar to me.

Note my last name: I will be married to my Dutch husband 18 years tomorrow and I STILL am unable to pronounce it properly. I've been trying since I met him two decades ago. I simply can't say it, and neither can most other Americans. If you didn't grow up making that French "oo" sound, you probably will not ever quite manage to make it right.

Give people some grace here and stop seeing it as a personal attack.

When it comes to my own name, I approximate it as best I can and I have learned to answer to almost any attempt that starts with a T. I know it's hard to pronounce and I don't mind when someone takes a stab at it and says it wrong. I always tell them not to worry because I can't nail it either.

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Michelle Teheux
Michelle Teheux

Written by Michelle Teheux

Lover of literature. Former newspaper editor. Fascinated by everything. Contact: michelleteheux@gmail.com. To buy me a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/michelleteheux

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