More thoughts & history on the Favre pronunciation

SIGH!
First of all, I believe that a person's name is "correctly" pronounced however that person wants it to be pronounced.

Secondly, we have always pronounced it Faahve. That's about a close as Americans can do the French, which gives just a hint of the "r" at the end.

My husband is Brett's second cousin twice removed. They are from the same county in MIssissippi. When we were married back in the 1960s we drove down there from Atlanta for me to meet all the family. The place is crawling with Favres, known and unknown! Gregory was stopped for speeding and the cop let us go with a warning once he learned we were on our honeymoon. It was such a delight to have a stranger pronounce our name "correctly," i.e. Faahve.

We began watching Brett's career when he was playing football in high school. The families weren't close enough that we had person contact. We would say, "Well, if he is good enough to make it to the pros and IF he is GOOD in the pros, everyone will learn to pronounce our name." Little did we know!

On the day Brett was drafted about 15 years ago, a huge Favre reunion was held with approximately 700 in attendance. This included the a group of Choctaws from Oklahoma, who had changed the spelling to Farve, because that was how that branch of the family had always pronounced it. We all sat around the TV that evening to watch coverage of the reunion by a New Orleans TV station and to find out who had drafted Brett. The Atlanta Falcons had drafted Brett and the name was murdered by the national sports broadcasters. When the New Orleans anchors added their comments, one of them said, "Well, they'll soon learn how to say Faahve."

and we said, YEEESS!

THEN we started reading, "he pronounces it to rhyme with "carve."No, no, NO!

Today, in 2005, we are the only hold-outs. My husband is one of 10 children, six of whom are living today. All his siblings say FARVE and it drives me crazy.

But, as this is a genealogy posting,I know that YOU all know that at some time names have changed in spelling and pronunciation. I just never imagined we'd be part of the generation where it changed.

My husband is a writer. You can read a column he wrote about Brett & the Favre name if you go to gregoryfavre.com and look for the title"Some Cousin He Turned Out To Be."

Bea