How do you pronounce Kirsten Dunst’s name? If you say it like “Kristin” — as in Kristin Davis or Kristen Stewart — I have two things to tell you: 1. You’re not alone. I do, too. And 2. I’m sorry, but that’s not actually correct.
Yep — Kirsten revealed the proper pronunciation this week in an interview with Town and Country magazine. According to her, it’s pronounced “Keersten” — not “Kristin” — like we’ve been saying since the Bring It On and Spider-Man days.
“I mean, everyone messes up my name, so I give up,” she said in a TikTok video with Town and Country. “I don’t care.”
Kirsten says she’s heard so many incorrect pronunciations of her name at this point that she now answers to all kinds of variations, including Kristin, “Kersten,” and “Keersten.” “I don’t blame people,” she added. “Like in England, they don’t really say my name right.”
She’s even had people in the industry say her name wrong, including “everyone” on the set of her last movie. While she didn’t name the specific project, Kirsten recently shot the dark satire film, The Entertainment System Is Down, with Keanu Reeves in Budapest. “There was, like, Swedish people and people from Hungary, and like, you just give up,” she stated.
As you can imagine, people were seriously shocked to learn they’d been pronouncing her name wrong this entire time. “Today I learnt I’ve been pronuncing her name incorrectly,” one person wrote on Reddit. “I thought the video would be a about people saying Kristen instead of Kirstin like how I’d been saying it.”
Some could also relate to Kirsten’s struggles with people mispronouncing their names. One person shared, “I totally get what she’s saying. I have a name that is mispronounced probably 75% of the time if people are reading it for the first time. Even after I say my name, many folks just keep pronouncing it differently. It’s whatever. Unless someone is doing it disrespectfully, I don’t really care.” Another person expressed similar thoughts, writing: “I get it. My name is Caitlin. Pronunciation isn’t a problem. But since there’s like 300+ acceptable spellings of it, I never bother to correct people.”
But some felt it should be corrected. “I get what she’s saying BUT: I’m a teacher. Please don’t just accept people mispronouncing your name. Correct them so they say it the way you want (this includes not giving yourself an ‘English’ name if you don’t want to),” someone said. Another agreed: “I feel like I’m in the minority here, but I always correct people when they mispronounce my name. I have an oddball name for the US so I get it and am never rude about correcting them, but just because it’s uncommon doesn’t mean I’m going to be okay being called something other than my actual name. To each their own, I suppose.” While one more added, “Nah, I care about pronunciation and spelling. It’s my name, learn it.”
I hear them, but I was just called “Chelseeah” by a customer service rep yesterday for the umpteenth time and didn’t bother to correct them because, after a while, it does get tiring — but that’s just me! LMK your thoughts on all this in the comments.