I'm glad you asked Nicole because I was also wondering about this. I always read it as "Inga" because for some reason my brain turns the "e" into an "a".

People mess up my name in all kinds of ways. I thought going by my middle name would be much easier than my first name, but it hasn't proven to be any easier. Maya isn't all that exotic, but people get it wrong anyway. My other middle name, Laila, is also fairly common, but also gets mispronounced. So I'm all out of names. So...I sympathize with the challenges of getting names right on the internet...

Maya is right. Inge is a Dutch name and it’s pronounced "ing- a” – but faster. No “j” sound.

Maya do you pronounce your name like the month of May?

San, it's My-a.

Oh sorry. Now I've messed it up. I'm glad I asked though. I knew it would be one or the other and a long time ago I decided it was probably Maya like the month of May. I have my brain retrained now though.
So then this leads me to ask if Nicole's daughter Mia is Mee a?

Nicole also thought that, San. Whenever I put an order for lunch, I get a little receipt back saying "Mya." I thought Maya is a pretty common name here, but I guess I was wrong.

I have heard it pronounced both ways here on the west coast.

Fun question;-)

Angie is right, Inge is a Dutch name (possibly derived from the Scandinavian/Swedish Inga).
You pronounce it as ing-e (the end 'e' sounds more like the 'e' in the word 'the' than as an a). The 'g' is almost silent, although there's the smallest trace left, like in the word 'amazingly' and then you quickly add the 'e').
Usually English-speaking people find it difficult to pronounce, often they do pronounce the 'g', but they make it into a 'hard g', as in the word 'gossip'.
Hope this doesn't sound too complicated;-)

Lise is pronounced: lee-ze (second 'e' sounds the same as in my name). Mia was close, because there is another, very similar, Dutch girl's name: Lies, and then you would indeed say LEES.

Aaaah, names and languages, and the differences between them, they never stop to intrigue me (call me a geek, but I'm really interested in all that stuff;-)

By the way, what is the title of the book Mia is reading Nicole?

"Number the Stars" by Lois Lowry is the name of the book.

Thank you so much for this help! It appears that no one was really saying your name correctly in her classroom. The teacher "looked it up" and is insisting the kids pronounce it with a hard G and a long A (like Angel). The stress accent is on the second half of the name.

Mia gets all kinds of pronounciations to her name too. She is Mia-like Mia Farrow or Mia Hamm. But many people pronounce it like Maya's name (long I). And if her first, middle and last name are on a paper that someone is using to call her name, they don't even see her first name because it is so short. They call out her middle name! Poor kid. I will say though, that having a short name made it very simple for her to learn to spell it! :) My advice to anyone who has the pleasure of naming a child, avoid any really long complicated or oddly spelled names. You will appreciate it in preschool when they have to learn to spell their name. Little Bob masters it in one night, but Alexandroviapia takes the whole school year to master it!

Mia and Maya are both very popular names right now for little kids - I have no problem pronouncing either because I hear them all the time (particularly Maya). So perhaps that bodes well for the future as everyone gets used to hearing it!

p.s. my son who's in kindergarten only has four letters in his name, but he is envious of his friend Mac :)

That's a great book, Nicole. We read it when I was in 4th grade, and I still remember it. Lois Lowry writes some pretty deep "children's" literature.

Thanks for all the clarification on the names, too! :D

You're welcome Nicole. The stress accent is definitely on the first syllable by the way. Maybe Mia can print this out and show it to her teacher;-)

And short names are definitely easier to spell. I remember reading in a women's magazine that a Belgian couple named their twin baby boys Arsène and Hippolyte (after two fictional characters in a detective novel). At first I had to laugh out loud (as a gimmick it's quite funny), but then I started thinking that those poor little fellows will have to walk around with those names for the rest of their lives...