We Don’t Know How To Tell You This, But We’ve Been Pronouncing Rihanna’s Name Incorrectly

A Fenty icon, a pop legend! Badgalriri is who we want to be when we grow up. Unfortunately, we’ve been pronouncing Rihanna’s name incorrectly this entire time. Pardon us as we go to the corner and hang our heads in shame. For years, we’ve been calling the makeup mogul “Ree-Ah-Na” and almost since the beginning over her career way back in 2005 she’s been telling us that that’s not how her name is said. It’s actually “Ree-Anna.”

We don’t know why this just sank in now but in a recent video for British Vogue— Rihanna introduces herself with the correct pronunciation of her name. She says, “Hello British Vogue, it’s Rihanna [Ree-Anna] and I want to welcome you to Paris where I am launching Fenty Maison.” We don’t know how we’ve gotten things so wrong/.

Like many of us, one Twitter user was horrified that we’ve been sullying the legend’s name for so long. They tweeted, “so we’ve been pronouncing Rihanna’s name wrong this whole time.” Meanwhile, the Brits (who are trying to claim our queen) are trying to tell us that they’ve been pronouncing RiRi’s name correctly. They claim it’s only the Americans who’ve been hella strong and wrong.

https://twitter.com/BritishVogue/status/1131449577498923008

One Twitter user declared, “see this is why she moved to the UK we’re the only ones that have been saying her name right.”

https://twitter.com/JXEDEAL/status/1133978568004947968

We’re about to fall apart here, especially since we realize this isn’t the first time Rihanna has tried to get us together about her name. Back in 2015, she took to IG to give us a mini tutorial about her name saying, “It’s Ree-Anna, follow me [on Snapchat].” (RiRi has since-deleted her SnapChat after that horribly offensive “Slap Rihanna vs. Punch Chris Brown” ad).

Source: Instagram

Even going back to 2012– at the TIME 100 red carpet an interviewer straight up asked Rihanna how to pronounce her name to which she happily replied, “I knew this was the question,” she told him. “It is Ree-Anna.”

As the first woman to ever create an original brand at LVMH who is a moisturized unbothered queen, we will be sure to pronounce Rihanna’s name the correct way from this moment forward.

We don’t deserve her.