Britax has gone and done it again. Way back in the ‘90s they were once known as Brit-axe, pronounced like Britain. Then they decided that to sound more Southern, they needed to give their “i” a long sound, so they became Br-eye-tax (can’t you just hear some Southern Belle pronouncing that?). Now they’ve changed again (sheesh, make up your minds already!) and we’re left scratching our heads. Carseat manufacturers are no different than any other companies we come across in our daily lives where we wonder how to pronounce their names. Here’s a list of the manufacturers and their pronunciations.
Baby Trend: Bay-bee Trend. Bet you didn’t see that one coming.
Britax: Brit-axe. Kind of like a blonde gal named Britt coming after you with an axe.
BubbleBum: Bubb-l Bum. Blow a bubble and stick it on your bum.
Chicco: Key-ko. It’s not Chee-ko like they tell you at Target, for gosh sakes!
Clek: The sound a rigid LATCH connector makes when it attaches to a LATCH anchor. Clek. Don’t know what that sounds like? Buy a Foonf, Fllo, Liing, Oobr, Olli, or Ozzi to find out.
Combi USA: Com-bee USA. I’m going to go drive the combine around the farm. A comma is used in a sentence to separate two clauses. Com-bee.
Cybex: Sigh-bex. Sigh. Cybex
Diono: Dee-oh-no. Not the other way! Get your brain out of the gutter now. C’mon!
Dorel: Door-el. I wonder how many doors there are at Dorel?
Safety 1st: Safe-tee 1st
Maxi-Cosi: Max-ee Co-zy
Cosco: Cos-co. It’s a lot like Cost-co, isn’t it? But it’s NOT. There’s no T. Cosco.
Evenflo: Eeeeee-ven-flow. Oh, oops. I put a W on the end. There’s no W there either. Just like there’s no T in Cosco.
Graco: Gray-co. Not Grack-o crack-o. Gray-co. See, nice and easy!
Harmony: Ebony and Ivory, live together in perfect Har-mony!
Kids Embrace: Kids Em-br-ace each other in friendship and goodwill.
Nuna: I eata my lunch at noon-a.
Orbit Baby: Or-bit Bay-bee. I wonder if they’ll book my trip to KIM for me. Oh wait, that’s Orbitz. Nevermind.
Peg Pérego: Peg Per-eggo. Leggo my eggo Peg. If you say it fast enough, it sounds right. They’re Italian, you know.
Safe Traffic System: Safe Tr-aff-ic Sys-tem. Whaddya know? That one was easy.
Summer Infant: Sum-mer In-fant. Oh how I wish it was summer right now! Oh wait! It is. Ugh.
UPPAbaby: UPPA-baby. Annnnddd UPPA baby! Wheeee! Fly through the air! Daddy will catch you when the swing comes back.
So there you have it–now you’re the cool kid on the block who knows how to say all the baby brand manufacturer names. You can impress all your friends when you get together for mimosas and mojitos at playgroup. I double-dog dare you to say Chicco after you’ve had a couple of cocktails 😉 .
*We would like to acknowledge that this blog marks an important milestone for us. This was our 1,000th published blog post! Thank you to all our readers who have proven throughout the years that we weren’t crazy to believe that other parents and caregivers would also be interested in a blog about carseats and child passenger safety! 🙂
The whole Britax pronunciation change bugs me. After finding out how it was supposed to be pronounced and pronouncing it that way for 8+ years, changing back to “brittax” from “breyetax” is just weird. They still have some videos with the “breyetax” pronunciation, and the last conference I went to, Sarah was still pronouncing it “breyetax”. The other day I watched one of their new videos and the “brittax” pronunciation was just annoying. Why change your pronunciation if it’s been working fine for the last decade?
Hold on…I used to pronounce it “britt-axe” (short I) and people kept telling me I was wrong and it’s “brye-tax” (long I, like “dry”). Now I’m questioning my whole reality! Help!
@Susan, you’d be amazed at who owns what anymore. Basically for carseats, it’s like what I have listed above. But every year, companies acquire the rights for branding. We find out about these usually at the ABC Show in October.
Love it!
I corrected a fellow Britax addict the other day (6 Marathons! Huskies! Regents! Frontier 85!), and then she started immediately saying it the ‘new’ way, and I had to fight the urge to re-correct her! Oddly enough, the southern belles I encounter seem to want to pronounce it Bree-tax more than anything.
Might want to add in Mama’s & Papa’s, or not, since no one ever buys them at my store, as lovely as they are, we just call it ‘art’.
Would you do a blog about all the companies that are related?
Thanks, KQ! We appreciate your support!
This is hilarious! LOL! That is not how I pronounce Recaro or have ever heard it pronounced, though. It’s always been reh-car-oh. Like red.
And Teutonia is derived from Teutonic. 😉 But I bet you knew that!
Happy 1,000!