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[Opinions] Zoe
in reply to a message by brydz
I went to high school with a Zoe, pronounce "zo". What made it worse is that her last name ended in "low," so she had a rhyming name and also a mispronounced one.I also know a Kezia who says her name "KEZ-ee-uh" rather than what I think is the Biblical pronunciation "keh-ZY-uh." I like my friend's pronunciation much better though, so I don't think it's a stupid pronunciation. :)
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Kezia=kez-zee-uh, Keziah=Kez-igh-uh.
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Keziah..It is one of my favourite names of all time and I can't see it any other way than Ke-Zy-uh.
I used to live with a teaching student, and she said at the primary school she had placement at there was a kid with the ugliest name she'd ever heard, Kezia "kez-ee-uh" and I said that is because its said the wrong way, and then informed her it was one of my favourites and she soon shut up. lol.
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KeziahI think Kez-ee-uh is also a legit prn, though not the more common one. In Hebrew names i is usually an -ee- sound.
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The only Keziah I know pronounces it KEE-zee-uh. That's the only way I can think of it when I see the name. I know kee-ZYE-uh is the correct pronunciation, but that sounds so weird to me.
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Yup, in Slavic languages (and Hebrew) it's actually with an 'ee', so it took me a while to figure out what was weird about it, LOL.
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Uh-oh. I saw Zoe and knew what was coming.This is pretty well-known already, but I just have to say it. My mother's name was Zoe and it was pronounced zo, without the final E sound. I just can't bring myself to think of it as stupid, nor can I bring myself to think of it as a mispronunciation. My college roommate Zoe pronounced it zo, also, and the fact that you've known someone else who does so makes me think that it indeed is not so stupid, and may just be a legitimate minority pronunciation.
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It has always seemed to me that Zoe (prn. zo) was just the natural American pronunciation of Zoe
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When I posted about this name and its pronunciation a little while ago, somebody suggested that perhaps, at one time, when this name was very unusual in the U.S., people did pronounce it zo. As it became more popular, people became aware of the Greek pronunciation of zo-ee.My mother was born in 1928, at a time when the name was very rare in the U.S., so this may be the reason why her name was pronounced zo. On the comments page for Zoe, there are a few comments calling this pronunciation "ignorant", which bothers me, because my grandparents were far from being ignorant people. My grandmother was an elementary school teacher. That's why I can't think of the zo pronunciation as being either stupid or ignorant. I really think that zo must have been the normal pronunciation for Americans back in the nineteenth and early-to-mid twentieth century. I've known two Zoes who pronounced it zo, and Solunastra has known one, which makes me think that it should be accepted as an alternative pronunciation.Sorry, I guess I'm a little defensive about Zoe pronounced zo!

This message was edited 8/4/2009, 9:04 AM

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