Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you must have heard of Gal Gadot, Hollywood’s newest superhero darling and the star of the latest Warner Bros picture “Wonder Woman”, with the highest Rotten Tomatoes rating of any superhero film to date.
(It’s at 97%, in case you were wondering.)
As the Israeli actress is now officially one of Hollywood’s brightest stars, it’s high time that we stop butchering her name, and make sure to get it right.
To be fair, Gal Gadot falls behind a long line of Tinseltown actors with names that the public finds hard to pronounce. There’s Amanda Seyfried, Lupita Nyong’o, Charlize Theron, Saoirse Ronan, Martin Scorsese, and more.
One of the most common mispronunciations people make is “Guh-doe” like how one would pronounce it if the name were French — which makes no sense because Gal is from Israel. Another one is “Guh-dot”, or “Gah-dot”, which is slightly closer to the right pronunciation but still not quite.
So how should you say “Gadot”?
Gal schooled everyone on her name on Jimmy Kimmel Live, which you can watch below:
As it turns out, if you pronounce Gal Gadot’s name in a Filipino way (which is, to pronounce everything as you spell it), you’d get the closest iteration possible. She says Gadot with a long O, which is more like “Guh-dote”, and less like “dot”, with emphasis on the T.
Another fun fact the actress taught us: Gal means wave in Israeli, while Gadot means riverbank.
Now you can correct pretentious-sounding speakers who insist on “Guh-doe”.
Have you always known how to pronounce Gal Gadot’s name? Let us know in the comments!
