American mum who used British name for son just realised she's been saying it wrong

Daily Mirror

23-07-2025

An American mum named Gerby documented her realisation when she learned that she'd been pronouncing her son's name wrong for years after having picked a traditional British name for him
Names can be a difficult thing to pronounce, especially if you meet someone who has a name from a different part of the world. Despite this, people still appreciate when you try your best to pronounce their name right, even if it takes you a few tries to get there.
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Besides this, you'd assume that you'd be able to pronounces your own children's names right, especially if you were the one who named them in the first place. However, one American mum named Gerby Derby has shared her shock after people started pointing out that she was pronouncing her son's name wrong.
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In a TikTok video, Gerby started to explain the story of how her husband had been adamant that he wanted their first born daughter to be named Samantha, which left him naming their first born baby.
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"He was so convincing that the keepers of the gender at our gender reveal party gave us gifts that said 'congratulations, it's a girl. We're excited to meet you Samantha'," she said. "At that point I was locked in. Everybody was calling this baby Samantha."
She went on to say that by her agreeing to the name Samantha, her husband had promised her that she could name every other child they had.
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"When we got pregnant with out son, I was able to pretty quickly narrow it down to two names - Theodore and Graham," she said, before saying she'd settled on Graham, which she pronounced as 'Gram'.
The video then continued with Gerby saying they had a third child in heaven, a daughter named Genevieve, which she also named. However, she's now pregnant with their fourth child, and asked for help as she was struggling to come up with a name.
Instead of giving her name suggestions, several viewers instead took to the comment section to point out that she was pronouncing the name 'Graham' wrong.
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"it's pronounced 'Grey-am' not 'gram'," one person wrote alongside several cry laughing emojis. A second person said: "That's pronounced Gray-uhm, actually :/."
Gerby soon made a second video where she shared her shock of realising that she'd been saying her son's name wrong all this time.
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"Am I pronouncing my child's name wrong? Am I pronouncing my child's name wrong?" she kept asking her viewers with a confused looked on her face. "Is it Graham?
She went on to pronounced the name in a few different ways before the video ended. The comments soon filled with people who shared their own opinions on how the name should be pronounced.
"Every Graham I've ever known as pronounced their name Gram," one person said. To this, another person explained: "It's Gram in the US but Grey-um in the UK, not sure about other English speaking countries tho."
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A third viewer said: "It's a Scottish name, and is pronounced Grey-Um. The 'h' is silent. And it's not GRAM."
"I've only ever heard it pronounced "Grey-um" or "Grey-em," another person said.
"It's your child. You get to decide how's it's pronounced. But in the south, it's gram like the unit of measurement," a fifth person said.
To settle the debate, a linguist professor known as Professor Woody has shared that it all comes down to the accents of where you live, as both versions are technically correct.
"We have different accents and dialects. We pronounce almost everything differently, including this," he explained in a video, going on to say that the way English is written is dated and based on one regional accent or dialect, which can make the spelling different from how it's now pronounced.
Baby name expert known as The Baby Fairy agrees with this, saying that there's usually a regional and dialectal difference in how you say the name depending on what country, and even what area of that country you're in, which can change the name from being one to two syllables.