You're probably saying Timothée Chalamet wrong too, and Gabourey Sidibe's husband just made it obvious
Brandon Frankel's defense of his wife's name rests on three words Americans allegedly learned to pronounce. Check the tape: they didn't learn any of them.
Brandon Frankel has spent six years married to Gabourey Sidibe and apparently every one of them hearing her name butchered, because this week he posted an ultimatum: people who managed to learn "croissant," "Timothée Chalamet," and "Gyllenhaal" can manage "Gabourey Sidibe." For the record, the woman herself has said it's "Gah-boo-ray Si-dee-bay" — her tricks: first name rhymes with cabaret, surname like "city by the bay."
The argument is righteous, and the examples are a trap he walked into. Each of his three "learned" words is a word America confidently says wrong.
The audit
- Timothée. Ask the man himself. "Honestly, it's 'Tim-oh-teh,'" Chalamet said on Jimmy Kimmel Live — "my parents cursed me with that" — before surrendering entirely: "it can be Timothy or Timmy or Doug or Allen." The most famous French name in Hollywood survives by letting everyone say it in English.
- Gyllenhaal. The Swedish original sounds roughly like "Yillen-hoolah," a party trick Jake performs on talk shows precisely because he knows nobody outside Sweden will attempt it. What America learned to say is "JILL-en-hall," which is not the name — it's a peace treaty.
- Croissant. The French say kwa-SOHN. The country Frankel is scolding orders a kruh-SANT, often at a drive-through.
The r/Fauxmoi thread, which largely sided with Frankel, ran the same audit on itself in real time:
"It's funny that everyone uses Timothée Chalamet as the example but nobody is actually pronouncing it 'properly'. It's like 'Tee-mo-tay' not Timothy. He just doesn't correct people because he thinks no one will get it."
Another commenter was blunter: Americans don't say Timothée correctly either, they just call him Timothy.
Why the trap makes his point stronger
Frankel's examples failing is the best thing that could have happened to his argument. The croissant standard was never a standard at all — English speakers didn't learn the French words, they negotiated unofficial English versions and moved on. Which means "Gabourey Sidibe" was never too hard; it just never got its negotiated version into circulation the way "Timothy Shalamay" did.
Sidibe has been famous since 2009 and an Oscar nominee since 2010. Her name has waited 17 years for the treatment "Gyllenhaal" got for free.
So learn the real one — Gah-boo-ray Si-dee-bay, cabaret and city by the bay. It takes one viewing of her explaining it. And if you've read this far still mentally calling her husband's other example "Timothy," congratulations: you are the person this article is about, and so, most of the time, am I.
Previously we wrote: Is Bill Murray a nice guy? Richard Dreyfuss and Lucy Liu answer that differently than his fans do