This is the way my parents always spelled my name, I always had an umlaut:

Joëlle

However, americans are pretty lazy. So my name usually looks like this:

Joelle

How do you pronouce it?  Well, some people really don’t know.    I’ve been called Jello, Gillette (like the razor, seriously, where does the T come from?), Jolie, Joanna, Joan, Joanna, Joyelle ….  It was always a nightmare in elementary school, because my classmates were always amused by the way a teacher would always butcher my name.    The worst one to date: Jelly.

In 8th grade, I decided to let people call me Joey. This was around the time where Dawson’s Creek was the hotness, and well, *I* thought Joey was pretty cute. One week a subsitute teacher came and marked me absent for the first few days despite my saying, “I’m JOEY, my full name is JOELLE!” She was looking for a boy.

The offical dictionary pronunciation is /joɛl/. The diaeresis or trema (umlaut) is the diacritic mark ( ¨ ) used to indicate a phonological diaeresis instead of a dipthong.  In other words, the trema indicates two seperate vowels and two seperate syllables.  When you see it, the letter preceeding it needs to be pronounced seperately. Without it most would assume that the name is all one syllable sounding exactly like “Joel” (like Billy Joel).

Other words in the english language that probably should have an umlaut:

coëfficiënt, coöperate, naïve

Also, my name rhymes with Noël. Is everyone clear now?