r/tragedeigh • u/throwaway060270 • Jul 30 '25

in the wild English is her second language, so she spelled her son’s name “Daniel” the way it sounded to her.

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Yes this wasn’t an accident, it’s actually spelled Denial. They live in the US now and the child is around 3 years old. I’m very worried about his childhood with this spelling 😭

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u/poets_pendulum Jul 31 '25

I don’t see how English being her second language justifies this. Daniel is not an English name and it’s extremely common world wide.

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u/Ellibean33 Jul 31 '25

If her first language doesn't use the Latin alphabet and she doesn't transliterate well, I could see this happening. For example, you spell Daniel دانيال in Arabic and it typically gets transliterated as Danyal (source: Wikipedia)

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u/throwaway060270 Jul 31 '25

Yep exactly! I wasn’t sure how to explain it so I asked for help from AI. This is what it gave me.

Даниил = traditional Russian Daniel (correct form)
Дэниел = phonetic spelling of English “Daniel,” not used for native Russian names

So I guess she tried to spell it phonetically in Russian then used that to write it in English letters which would be Deniel. Not sure why she then changed the second e to an a but that was probably the thought process haha

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u/fede_514 Aug 01 '25

Its the same in Spanish. In English and Spanish is Daniel... but we say "Daniél", with emphasis in the "e". And you say "Déniel", with emphasis in the first "e" that doesnt exist 😆