Nobody can pronounce my baby's name I think it's easy

“Some people don’t tell you when you become a parent, how weird it is when you name your baby,” new mom Hannah Sands begins her now-viral TikTok video about regretting and changing her son’s name. 

“Not that it’s not enough of a mess around picking a name for your baby, but picking a name that no one can pronounce… it’s been a TIME,” she says.

Hannah, who has a Brazillian partner, continues, “Australians are so annoying with names that are the tiniest bit foreign.”

The Brisbane-based mum gave birth to her son Raul in May 2022, but after just a few minutes, people were already mispronouncing his name. 

Despite choosing the name thinking it was “easy to pronounce”, a nurse looked at it and said, “Oh, like R-a-u-l, like Paul with an R. Roll.”

While it was frustrating for the parents, Hannah said it wasn’t the first time they had to deal with this sort of issue. 

“My husband’s name is Paulo… it’s not that hard. But everyone here calls him Paul-O and it drives him crazy,” she explains.

Not wanting the same issue for their son, they decided to change the spelling to make it easier for people to pronounce. 

They changed his name to Raoul (pronounced ra-ool), thinking it would make the name more “phonetic” — but that didn’t work. 

“When I tell you no one can pronounce our son’s name in Australia… like what is wrong with you people?” Hannah says. “Raoul.. RA-OOL.”

“My own mother came to see us in the hospital and asks his name and I say ‘Raul’. She goes ‘Rorl. Rorl?'” she continues.

“There are moments where I’m just like, wow it would be easier if we chose one of the other names. But his name is Raoul.”

The clip has since been viewed over 700,000 times, with plenty of others sharing similar experiences with their own names. 

“People can hardly pronounce Beau, it’s BO,” one replied.

“I have a daughter named Persephone and a doctor called out ‘purse phone’,” another shared, leaving Hannah in stitches.

“My daughter’s name is Mila (Me-lah) but everyone says Miller,” a third commenter revealed.

Another insisted: “Raoul is such a beautiful name, please don’t change it.”

“Also in Australia and we named our daughter Lorelai and went with that spelling even though we preferred Lorelei because of this too!” concluded another mum. 

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