A sixth pronunciation for the letter "x".

[Travis B.]

Of course not, the Brits are obviously going around saying "RRÉLF! RRÉLF!"

Just because something is written as /r/ phonemically does not mean it is trilled...

[Vijay]

I know. It was a joke.

[Salmoneus]

Is /reIf/ still standard in the U.K.? I knew someone with that name, but he spelled it Rafe and I didn't think of it as a variant of Ralph at the time.

÷÷÷÷÷÷
I've done /Z/ for x, too.... picked it up in my early teen years and seem to have mentally stored it as the default foreign pronunc until I made a conlang with /x/ and /h/, necessitating using both in romanization.

Probably not, at least for most people. For older people of higher education levels, probably. /r{lf/ is sort of a big "my parents wanted me to sound upper-class but didn't know how upper-class people actually pronounced their names" sign. But since those people now far outnumber the surviving upper-class Ralphs, I guess they've pretty much won that battle now. On which note: a couple of weeks ago I encountered a young person actually called "Raphe". [Come to think of it, there's an actor Rafe as well].

[yangfiretiger121]

Was Raphe his name or short for Raphael?

[Travis B.]

Was Raphe his name or short for Raphael?

What do you think, considering we are talking about Ralphs and not Raphaels?

[Salmoneus]

Was Raphe his name or short for Raphael?

It was in a context where I'd have expected a full name, or at least as full as he ever goes by. It's possible it was short for Raphael, but given that Ralph is much more common than Raphael, and I've not encountered Raphael being abbreviate to Raphe, it seems unlikely.

I was about to say that there was a good display of the transition in actors: Ralph Fiennes (b. 1962) to Rafe Spall (b. 1983). But actually, Rafe isn't an example of the modern Raphe's - he's named after a character in a Beaumont play from the early 17th century, so his Rafe predates the Ralphs (and shows that as late as 1983, guys like Tim Spall (working class, from inner-city London, and at that point not yet rich or famous) could encounter "Rafe" as "a cool name in an old play I'm going to steal because I've never seen it anywhere else!" rather than as just a normal variant of 'Ralph').

[Zaarin]

I'm just astonished people still name their poor child "Ralph." It's like naming your daughter "Gertrude" or "Beatrice." :p

[linguoboy]

I'm just astonished people still name their poor child "Ralph." It's like naming your daughter "Gertrude" or "Beatrice." :p

I mean, that's the connotation in the USA (where the name is as good as dead), but "Ralph" has a different history in other countries.

"Beatrice" has actually made a slight comeback. It's currently as popular for newborns as it was in the early 70s.

[Zaarin]

I'm just astonished people still name their poor child "Ralph." It's like naming your daughter "Gertrude" or "Beatrice." :p

I mean, that's the connotation in the USA (where the name is as good as dead), but "Ralph" has a different history in other countries.

"Beatrice" has actually made a slight comeback. It's currently as popular for newborns as it was in the early 70s.

Yeah, I've noticed there's been something of a revival of "old-fashioned" names, mostly for girls. My dad's a middle school teacher (so 11-14 year olds, mostly), and he's recently had students with names like Madeline, Gwendolyn, Ruth, Elaine, etc. Also a Roland, but he's actually first-generation French African, so different case.