For example, an English person called Bob might introduce themselves as “Bob”, whereas an American person called Bob might introduce themselves as “Bahb”. (Sorry, don’t know the phonetic alphabet but hopefully you get my gist)
Should you pronounce those two people’s names the same, with your own natural accent, or should you copy how the person says their own name?
Edit: I specifically picked a generic English name with different pronunciation across different accents. I know my wording wasn’t great, sorry! Hopefully the edit is a bit clearer.
Context and other languages
When pronouncing a name from a different language, I firmly believe you should copy the pronunciation of the owner of that name, and not Anglicise the name unless asked to. I say this as a speaker of a language that English people regularly mispronounce and even insist to me that they know the correct pronunciation of my language.
This question reminds me of a dog I ended up with. He knew his name, but only in the same accent as his previous owner. So I’d be at the dog park in New England calling for my dog in the most exaggerated southern accent I could muster.
That’s really funny to me. What was his name and what was he like?
His name’s “Elvis” and he answered to “Aye-ellll-vis”. Now he doesn’t answer to anything because he’s gone deaf, but he’s still a great pup. He’s a senior terrier mix, about 10 pounds. He’s a bit of a velcro dog and I am the One True Human, so it sucks for him that I work outside the home. He’s stuck with Work From Home Partner, who just doesn’t fill the same void in Elvis’s heart. So, Elvis sleeps all day and then watches the front very attentively when he decides I should come home.
He still has bursts of energy. Last weekend he met a chihuahua his age. Elvis was like “omg, you’re slightly smaller than me and seem even more chill. Let me dance around and thwack you in the face so you’ll play with me”. The other pup was game and it was adorable to watch two seniors playing.
He goes on long hikes with me. He gets tired after about a block and will turn around and try and get me to go back to the car. I generally just carry him at this point. He’s lucky he’s tiny. He’ll lean forward to ask to be set down, then he’ll either sniff something or amble so very slowly along the path. He is the worst hiker.