Pronunciation of Eamon

A Super Eamon ad giving the pronunciation as [ee-men].

Since Eamon is a textual game without spoken audio, players' pronunciation of its name vary and there's no truly definitive answer to how it should be pronounced. Creator Donald Brown chose the name around 1979 when he was first developing the game system, reportedly basing it on a name he picked at random from a nearby dictionary. The name Eamon, also commonly spelled Éamon or Eamonn, is a traditional Irish male name normally pronounced "AY-men" (rhyming with "layman"), but Brown stated that he wasn't familiar with the Irish pronunciation.

Below are some sources relating to the title's pronunciation:

• The second edition of the Eamon Deluxe Player's Manual notes that the name is "commonly pronounced 'E-MUN'". In International Phoenetic Alphabet notation the name would be expressed as /ˈiːm(ə)n/, rhyming with the word demon.
• A printed advertisement for Super Eamon gives the pronunciation as [ee-men].
• A thread begun by Sam Ruby in the alt.games.eamon newsgroup in 2000 is entitled "I Always Pronounced It 'EE-mon'".
• Fredrik Ekman's Eamon website reports the following from Donald Brown: "I've pronounced [the personal name] 'Eee-ah-mon', but I was told it's actually 'eh-mon'. I still usually use my old pronunciation, and say that's how the planet's name is pronounced, no matter how the people's names are pronounced."
• B I Z A R R O by Allan Porter features a parody of the game with the similar-sounding name "Eaton".

See also

• Eamon: Curse of the Hellsblade walkthrough by AppleAdventures at YouTube.