Way back in 1977 a Star Wars toy commercial aired in which a kid said, "Look! It's Princess Laya!" We thought he had made a mistake, but there was some question of the Leeya/Laya pronunciation even then. I noticed in the final film they stuck with Laya all the way through.
Did you know Mowgli is pronounced wrong about 99% of the time? I blame Disney for both these things.
Not sure why you blame Disney. Star Wars is terribly inconsistent with how names are pronounced. Han is sometimes pronounced like hand (without the d) and sometimes Hon (with a short o). I always say, Laya, and I'm pretty sure that's the more common pronunciation throughout the entire saga - not just the Disney movies.
share"I blame Disney for both these things. "
Bitch, please. It was "Lee-ya" and "Lay-ya" through the first film, the one directed by Lucas himself.
Lucas pays so little attention to his actors that he doesn't even correct their pronunciation of words he invented himself!
I was partly joking about Disney. The Mowgli name pronunciation is in The Jungle Book but in a place a reader might not notice or see first thing. I didn't realize "Lee-ya" changed to "Lay-ya" so early on in the series. I've used the "Lee-ya" pronunciation since seeing the first movie in 1977.
https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/134527/what-is-the-correct-pronunciation-of-princess-leias-name
Some day when I have a absolutely nothing better to do, I'm going to keep track of which actor uses which pronunciation in ANH. Is each actor consistent?
Oh wait, I won't take the trouble. I'm sure it's all recorded on some fan site somewhere.
I love that you know about Moe-gli/Mou-gli, too!
Thank goodness the Lord of the Rings guys geeked out and consulted the pronunciation guide in the appendices before pronouncing it "Soron" instead of "Sour-on". I spent my ignorant youth basically thinking the Dark Lord of the Rings had a homophonous (is that a word? it should be) name with Malcolm McDowell from Star Trek.
But two people in the same universe pronouncing the name differently? I actually get that. Everybody I know named Diane or Diana gets called the other name all the time and it drives them nuts. Doesn't stop it from happening, though.
This post reminds me of a time when I went to a comedy show. The comic was talking about Star Wars and talking about everything screwed up in the movies (Humorously). He kept switching between Lee-Ya and Lay-a. The funniest thing was watching the audience reaction as people started to realize he was doing it on purpose.
shareOkay, I am watching the series in order and just saw the movie again. The name is pronounced only about three times, at other times she is "the princess" or some description besides her name. The two times the name is very clearly Leeya were both people who didn't know her well. The only one who knew her well and said it was C3PO; he seemed to say something between Leeya and Laya but it leaned towards Laya. This is too subtle for most people. They should have picked a pronunciation and stuck with it starting from the first movie. As it was I stuck with what I heard first which was Leeya...will learn to say Laya by the time I get all the way through to the last movie.
Did Han Solo consistently say his own name the same or did he never say it, only other people? This was not as noticeable to me.
Leh-ih-ah is the correct pronunciation.