The Pronunciation of 'Ralph'
I ought to mention somewhere on my web pages that my name is preferably pronounced 'Rayf' *, not Ralph. I prefer it and have always been called this by friends and family. I do, however, answer to both pronunciations, and don't vociferously object to the more obvious one.
For those of you who wish to know more:
a) "Ralph" was traditionally pronounced this way in Britain
b) Gilbert rhymed it with "waif" in H.M.S. Pinafore and Sullivan provided the music for Little Buttercup to tell us all about it:
"In time each little waif
Forsook his foster-mother,
The well born babe was Ralph--
Your captain was the other!!!"
c) the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams pronounced his name this way
d) actor Ralph Fiennes (of The English Patient, The Constant Gardener and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, amongst others) pronounces his name the same way
e) Speaking of the Harry Potter series, a book with a similar theme - The Lives of Christopher Chant by Diana Wynne Jones (1988) has an Uncle Ralph (Rafe) as a main character.
*"Rayf" == "Raif" == "Rafe" == "Raiph".
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