: 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

@Welton431

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You could always make a note in prose of how it is said. For example, in Matthew Reilly's Scarecrow (and one other book for which this is arguably a spoiler), there is a character named Aloysius. At the very first appearance of this name, the prose notes that

he pronounced it allo-wishus

which immediately clues in the reader to how it is said. If not for that, a reader unfamiliar with the name might think of it as "a-loy-see-us" or such.

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