Authors

Jovana Caicedo

Faculty Advisor

Kristin Bovaird-Abbo

Document Type

Presentation

Publication Date

4-2020

Abstract

How would you pronounce the name Jovana Caicedo? Are you hesitating? That is okay this name has given many people trouble. The most common mispronunciation people will make with the first name is Joanna and many people will not attempt the last name. If they do try the mispronunciation will usually be something like, “sigh-se-duh.” When looking at why people mispronounce this name, this project will look into the phonology of the name, or the study of the sounds within a language, and the morphology of the name, or the study of words and how they are formed and their relationships with other words in a language. Such as when people associate different words or names, like Jovana, with a similar looking name with similar sounds. Phonological (Sound) processes like the deletion of a sound could help explain why so many English speakers will try to drop the “v” in Jovana. This project will examine this problem by looking at the etymology, or the study of the origin of a word or a name and how its meanings have changed, for the name Jovana Caicedo. For instance, the name Jovana is said to be a form of the name John from the Bible. However, variations of this name can be found in many languages from Danish to Czech and even in Medieval French. By studying the ways that people mispronounce names such as these, we will be able to look at how different native languages deal with encountering new words or names.

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