Luis, In addition to pronunciation, English speaking persons may not understand what they hear. My family name here in the U.S. is DeGrella. As a "Portuguese" name DeGrella is found only in English speaking countries. Having found other DeGrellas and DeGrillas that are not related to me but whose ancestors came from Madeira, raised the question how did this name come to be. My conclusions is that when a Portuguese word beginning in a vow is spoken by a person from Portugal, the English speaking person does not hear the leading vow. Thus when my great grandfather told the census taken in New York city that his name is Alexandre de Agrella, the census taker heard it as Alexander DeGrella. Also when he joined the U.S. Army, his name was written down as DeGrilla. I believe these types of written records caused my grandfather to use DeGrella as his name. (The DeGrillas on Bermuda believe their original Madeiran name to be Aguillar.) Based upon your experience with both languages, would you agree with this conclusion? Thanks, David DeGrella Tennessee, USA On Thu, 19 Jan 2006 10:32:07 -0800 (PST) Luis Beal <luisbeal@yahoo.com> writes: > Freitas is a very common name not just in Madeira but also in the > continent, and I am sure the Azores also. I am portuguese born and > raised but I live in the US and I have to say that I have heard many > portuguese names pronounced in such a way that I did not recognize > them as portuguese. I have to see them written down to know. I am > sure you can pronounce your name the portuguese way but I have to > share what I have seen so far happen in this country. For example my > oldest son is named Miguel and he has been called Maguel, Meigue'l, > Migu'e'l, Magu'e'l. And this is also a spanish name so one would > think it would be pronounced correctly. My favorite name screw up is > a street in California called Coelho St. It is pronounced Co^e'ho^ > with the hard english H sound, it sounds very interesting. Although > the "lh" sound is a very hard sound for an american to pronounce > (like the "th" sound is for a portuguese) the way the word is > pronounced here is even harder than the original form.! I > remember the guy who told us about this street name was getting > frustrated because we did not recognize it and he kept repeating it > and saying that it was a portuguese name. Well he was right but I > could not tell until I saw it written down. And then, of course, > there are the portuguese names that have been completely > americanized and impossible to recognize as portuguese. This is the > case of my uncle who moved from Madeira to the US, his last name was > Rodrigues da Ressurreicao but his children go by Rogers. I always > get a kick out of that one. > Luis Beal