: Re: Do hard to pronounce names break immersion? I have a character in my book named Jiolluav (with the correct accent, Zholl-you-of or /ʒōl-'yoo-äv/), and I've written my entire "novel" (it's a

@Bryan361

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Yes, I find it distracting. To me, the problem is not so much if a name is hard to pronounce, but if it's difficult to figure out how it's supposed to be pronounced.

Unless the spelling of a name is somehow important to your story, if you're going to use made up names, I'd say to spell them phonetically. If Jiolluav is supposed to be pronounced Zholl-you-of, then why not just write it "Zholl-you-of"?

This is especially true if you have multiple difficult to pronounce names that resemble each other. If there's a character named Jiolluav and another named Jaolvual, I think readers may well get them confused and find themselves constantly checking back.

Sure, in a fantasy or science fiction novel, I expect names to be unusual-sounding. If you're alien from the planet Rigel 7 is named "Roger Smith", that would be very distracting. But don't give me a name with a baffling pronunciation, like Wadlkjaece. Give me something phonetic, like Wa-juto-case or some such.

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