A woman has refused to apologize to her cousin after she informed him and his wife that they have been pronouncing their child's name incorrectly for years.
Now, I'm sure many of us can relate to people mispronouncing our names. However, it must be incredibly rare to actually find out your own parents have been mispronouncing the name they gave you at birth.
Well, that's exactly what happened to one family, whose name troubles were highlighted by a Redditor writing under the throwaway handle 'throwRAcousinkiddo'.
Taking to the 'Am I The A**hole' page of the social media site - where users share a recent grievance from their lives and the community votes on who was in the wrong - the unnamed woman titled her post: "AITA [Am I the a**hole] for telling my cousin and his wife that they were pronouncing their son's name wrong?"
The 23-year-old woman reveals that despite having Irish roots, many of her family now live in England - including her 28-year-old cousin "Liam".
She then reveals that Liam and his wife have a four-year-old son.
"For the sake of this post let's say they named him 'Oisin', which is an Irish name that is meant to be pronounced like 'oh sheen', in accordance with the old Gaelic tradition of nothing being pronounced like it's spelled," she writes.
Then, on Christmas day, she revealed that she met up with Liam, his wife, and Oisin in a park.
She writes: "I had met Liam before when we were kids and teens (just a few times), but since Oisin was born we had only texted, so I had never heard Liam pronounce Oisin's name.
"We went to the park, we met up with them, and I said 'this must be Oisin'."
Now, hold onto your hats, because this is where this story takes a real turn!
The Redditor continues: "Liam asked why I said it like that. I asked what he meant. He said it's pronounced like 'oi sin'. Like hoisin sauce without the h.
"I tried to move past it, introduced my son, sent the boys off to play. Liam's wife asked about my son's name (also very Irish) and I told her. Liam joked that with all I know about Irish names, it was shocking that I'd mispronounced his son's name so badly. I said something like 'I'm not the one mispronouncing it'."
The couple then asked what she meant by this comment, and she revealed to the parents that their son's name should actually be pronounced "oh-sheen".
Realizing their backs are against the ropes, the Redditor continues: "Liam said it's how his parents pronounce it, and I said 'your parents with English accents?'.
"Things then seemed a bit tense so I changed the subject saying that 'Oisin (pronounced their way) seems like a lovely lad, though'. The wife then said that they had to go, even though we'd been there barely 10 minutes, if that."
That night, our Redditor got a call from Liam's parents (her aunt and uncle) asking why she had told their son and daughter-in-law why they had been pronouncing their own son's name wrong.
During this phone call, she also received a message from Liam saying she had "upset" his wife "because she's now convinced that they've been calling their son the wrong name his entire life and that she loved his name before she met me".
She then reveals that her cousin, aunt, and uncle want her to rectify the situation by telling Liam's wife that she was, in fact, wrong about the pronunciation of the name.
"They've called me an a***hole, saying that even if I am right (which I'm not), it's not my place to correct them on their own son's name. They also feel that me pronouncing Oisin their way at the end was being passive-aggressive," she writes.
Well, after receiving over 5200 upvotes from Redditor's, many of the platform's users agreed that the original poster was not in the wrong for correcting the parents.
One person wrote: "As an Irish person, I am finding this very comical. NTA [not the a**hole]".
[[imagecaption|| Credit: Reddit]]
[[imagecaption|| Credit: Reddit]]
And a second replied: "NTA. You can literally Google how to pronounce Oisin, and there are videos of it. They didn’t do their due diligence before naming their child to even verify pronunciation. That’s their problem."
[[imagecaption|| Credit: Reddit]]
And a third typed: "NTA. If you’re going to use another culture’s name and spelling, but not the pronunciation, you’re going to have to accept people telling you that you’re mispronouncing it.
"It’s like calling your child siobhan and getting pissy when people tell you it’s not pronounced ‘siyob-han’".
