How do you pronounce that?

To me my name, Lois, seems so easy – only four letters and pronounced almost how it’s spelt, Lo-iss; however over the years I’ve had all sorts of near misses with pronunciation – Loys, Lo-eese, Loss, Louise, Louis, Lewis, Lucy, Lose, Loose, Loos… I don’t mind, people try their best!

I don’t suppose it occurred to my parents that it would be difficult, my mum’s grandma was Lois, her sister had it as a middle name… And i guess, although I am really particular and careful with the names I give my characters, it didn’t really occur to me, as it didn’t to my parents, that some of my people would have problems.

In ‘The Stalking of Rosa Czekov‘, some people struggled with her surname – well, there is the famous Russian dramatist Anton Chekhov, which is  a different spelling of the same name – which would have been written in Cyrillic anyway, so it didn’t seem too difficult to me. Some people wondered why he had a ‘foreign’ name… well there are plenty of people born and bred in this country whose names might have originated from different places…

However the character in ‘Rosa‘ who people most struggled with, was Tyche Kane… she is one of those characters and I honestly can’t say where her name came from, it was just there, with her… Tyche was the daughter of Aphrodite and Zeus, of course. I pronounce her name Tie-key – and I guess she does too! However some of my readers struggled – Titch, Titchy, Tike, Tickey…

I pondered on this… but then thought, well, this is like real life and names – some people always have trouble with knowing how to say things, so I have just left it…

I was reminded of this when I saw the following:

http://https://youtu.be/tf4Gzt8aZS0

… and here is a link to ‘The Stalking of Rosa Czekov’: