Jake Gyllenhaal Explains How To Pronounce His Name (VIDEO)

Jake Gyllenhaal, who is promoting 'Prince of Persia,' took some time to explain how to pronounce his "ridiculous" surname.

"It's Yil-En-HOO-Le-Hay," he joked.

Costar Ben Kingsley tries to spell the name with not much luck.

WATCH:

Comments

[ZeppelinLed]

03:24 AM on 06/19/2010

love it! want him even more now!

[Musiker]

08:31 AM on 05/18/2010

Awwwwww...he was just joshin'!

[Sad But True]

01:56 PM on 05/17/2010

The actress in the interview doesn't look a damned thing like the actress in the promotional poster. Gotta love that Photoshop!

[darth geekboy]

02:49 AM on 05/17/2010

so i guess his first name should then be pronounced:

YA-key

[reasonshouldrule]

10:58 PM on 05/16/2010

I can understand the "yil en" (for Gyllen), but how do they get "HOO-le-hay" from "haal"? (I admit I don't know any Swedish.)

[cjsamms]

08:20 AM on 05/17/2010

I think he was joking. If you watched the whole interview, he didn't seem to take anything the interviewer said seriously.

If you have a long hard to pronounce ethnic name, you tend to develop a sense of humor about it after being asked for the millionth time how to pronounce it, asked what it means, or hear it mispronounced badly.

[right Alice]

01:21 PM on 05/17/2010

Ya gotta love him even more for this - yes, he was joking!

[myrch]

02:32 PM on 05/18/2010

He's making an allusion to the movie, The Man with Two Brains.

[LMPE]

03:00 PM on 05/16/2010

I bet that people in Greenland have harder-to-pronounce names.

[RBLRDR]

02:08 PM on 05/16/2010

I still can't say it right Jake. It would help if you explained it just one more time and in the nude please.

[Evita Luisa]

09:54 PM on 05/16/2010

Tee hee hee hawwwww! Dang, what a great idea! Second that!

[ontariogirl]

08:45 AM on 05/17/2010

Third that.

[2CLEVER]

09:06 AM on 05/16/2010

LOO zer

[elatas]

06:33 AM on 05/16/2010

There's two "l" at the top. It's top heavy...LOL!!!!

[Formeralaskangal]

01:04 AM on 05/16/2010

Jake Yil-En-HOO-Le-Hay is currently filming a movie near Iceland's AY-yah-fyah-lah-YOH-kuul volcano.

[Margo Arrowsmith]

07:53 AM on 05/16/2010

That was cute, fanned.

[LMPE]

02:58 PM on 05/16/2010

Damn! I was going to mention the volcano!

[Bitsko]

11:30 PM on 05/15/2010

Dude, love your work, but you're not Welsh. You were brought up just a few blocks north of me in Soho, New York City.

[totalliberal]

11:55 PM on 05/15/2010

Not Welsh. Welch. Like it's near Cornhole on England's south coast.

[LMPE]

02:59 PM on 05/16/2010

Gyllenhaal isn't Welsh. It's Swedish.

[totalliberal]

04:11 PM on 05/16/2010

Wales is a city in Sweden.

[reasonshouldrule]

10:52 PM on 05/16/2010

It's Swedish? I thought it looked Dutch.

[StarDagger]

11:18 PM on 05/15/2010

I pronoucne it, "hot Bi-sexual man that I would go down on in a heartbeat!"

[Yeah-Me]

02:24 AM on 05/16/2010

LOL

*High Five*

[Evita Luisa]

09:56 PM on 05/16/2010

Me, too, or er, ah, I mean me/us, two, or ah, me three - danghei/iseffinhotttttttt!

[Matt Osborne]

10:51 PM on 05/15/2010

Say it three times fast.

[totalliberal]

09:55 PM on 05/15/2010

It's Welsh for Jones.

[MorpheusXNYC]

11:06 PM on 05/15/2010

Actually, it's Swedish.

From Wikipedia:
"Gyllenhaal is a Swedish noble family descended from the cavalry Lieutenant Nils Haal (d. 1680 or 1681), ennobled in 1652 with a change of surname to Gyllenhaal."

But the phonetically complex pronunciation could make one think it's Welsh. An easy mistake. :-)

[totalliberal]

11:49 PM on 05/15/2010

Nope. Jones. And Jake is short for Gwindolofundoifiynasnicoth

[statirapanahi]

09:49 PM on 05/15/2010

Jake is sooooo cute! He's like Hoolo( Peach), you wanna eat him.

[Evita Luisa]

09:57 PM on 05/16/2010

So RIGHT 'n that one! Actually, I'd like to keep him whole, mighteee fiyaennnne self. Wow!