Pronunciation Guide to Hayo Thielecke's name

My name often leads to questions and mispronunciations; so here is some explanation.
In fact, everything is pronounced as in some English word:

Ha as in hard (stressed)
yo as in Yo! (not stressed)
Th as in Thames
ie as in fierce (stressed)
leck as in aleck
e as in water

Of course, by analogous reasoning one can prove that "fish" should be spelt ghoti: enough, women, nation. Attributed to GB Shaw.

TEA-lacker is a reasonable approximation if you have a non-rhotic accent such as Received Pronunciation, that is, the final r is not pronounced. For Americans, TEA-lack-uh may be closer. (I do not, in point of fact, lack for tea, being a satisfied customer of HR Higgins online.)

Etymology

"Hayo" is a Frisian variant of the Germanic name "Hagen". The spelling with a "y" may be due to Frisian having a soft "g", like Dutch. It is not a very common name, but exists in the Netherlands and northern Germany (where it is often confused with "Hajo", short for "Hans-Joachim").

"Thielecke" is derived, via "Thilo", from the Germanic "Dietrich". "Thilo" is a short form of "Dietrich" (like "Bob" for "Robert"), and the "-cke" is a suffix much like "-son" or "-s" in English. Hence the derivation is analogous to "John" -> "Jack" -> "Jackson". There are many variations like Thiele, Thielicke, Thielemann, etc.

Going back further, "Hagen" is cognate with "hegen" (to guard or protect), and "Dietrich" derives from "theod" (people) and "ric" (ruler). The latter can be traced to an Indo-European root.

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