What do you mean 'you can't pronounce it?' Clearly it's aY-shi... uh, Aa-chil or uh... Eai-shiluz aw forget it!
I'm not a big fan of the hard to pronounce and read names, my names are typically short, easy to type and easy to say. Holly...Lewis...Ava...etc--I don't like it when the name becomes this difficult thing to pull off or when its used as a way to characterize. I don't want to research into what a name like Ronald means because when you're named, no one knows what kind of person you're going to be. A nickname can have a little something behind it, but not a given one.
That's true, but sometimes authors like to add some symbolism in their characters' names. I know in just about every book I've read for school, the teacher goes on and on about how the name is symbolic, whether it was intended or not. I thought it was "ahy-skee-l-uhs"....maybe?
I always wondered what people would point out as symbolic in my own writing if I were dead and they were reading it years from now. Its kind of a funny thought but I often wonder how much of what we consider symbolic in novels really wasn't intentional.
That's about how most classicists I've known pronounce it. ee-skull-us, with the weight on the ee I hate difficult to pronounce names; I will not even attempt them. When reading they cease to be a word (for me) and just become an image on the page that stands for something.
A short story I posted here was perceived as having an environmental message by at least two people, something I had never thought of, even though I understood how it could seem so.
Plus, it goes along with their whole "we are so horrible you can't even imagine us" image. "Our names are so horrible you can't even pronounce them". I don't mind Lovecraft's names. The Elders' real names may be unpronouncable, but I assume their transcriptions into the English alphabet are pronounced according to standard spelling rules. A hard 'k', 'th' as in 'thought', 'u' as in 'pluto', 'l', 'h' as in 'hoot', and 'u' again. I just think it's silly when writers make up non-standard pronounciations... like "my character's name is spelled 'Angor', but the 'o' is pronounced like an 'e' in his own language". That doesn't make sense, unless Angor actually uses the English alphabet to spell his name, and then the writer needs to explain why an alphabet that looks and is pronounced exactly like the English one exists in their fantasy world.
