The name “Ghislaine Maxwell” is on the tip of our tongues. She’s implicated in some way in this Jeffrey Epstein mess, as the friend, confidante, and accused madame for the man. We don’t know much yet because investigators seem to be having trouble tracking her down. But also, her name is on the tip of our tongues because we’re not sure how to say it.
It’s one of the biggest news story of a decade, so naturally it comes up a lot in conversation. “Where is…the woman, you know, his friend?” we ask each other. “Did they find that lady in Boston? Was the In-N-Out photo of what’s-her-name fake?” it seems to go. I suppose the easiest way to keep one’s name out of the American public’s mouth is have one that’s hard for the American public to say.
The name is French, which adds an extra international air of mystery to an already shadowy figure, like when you pronounce Target the French way to add a bit of intrigue to a big box store. In France, “Ghislaine” is pronounced the French way too, as you may have suspected. That goes something like this:
That’s not how she pronounces it, though. Maxwell is British, and she’s lived in the U.S. since 1991. Her media magnate father died while vacationing on his yacht, Lady Ghislaine, which he had named for her, his youngest of nine and reported favorite. She later moved to the States, becoming a socialite of the Upper East Side variety. All this is to say, it’s more often pronounced the Anglo-American way. But what is that like? More than its foreignness, the name “Ghislaine” is rare in Maxwell’s adoptive home. Even at the height of the moniker’s popularity, which spiked intermittently in the 20th century, just five American newborns per 1 million were named Ghislaine. So the news-reading public is unlikely to have come across the Americanized version of the name in its daily life, at work or at their kid’s daycare or at freshman-year orientation, during icebreakers. You may not remember anyone’s name from that circle, but there’s a good chance it was never Ghislaine.
According to a quick survey of videos of people introducing her, American and British pronunciations are roughly the same (Maxwell was the founderof an environmental nonprofit, a philanthropic job that often took her to conferences and TedTalks, and before the U.N.). These people, who I assume confirmed how to pronounce the name before saying it in front of others, say “Gee-lane,” with a hard g. For the second syllable, some hit the “–ane” pretty hard, as in “Gee-lane,” or “G’lane.” Others go with “-ahn,” as in “Gee-lahn”. It depends on regional accent (this guy sounds like he’s saying “Glen” when introducing her at a conference some years ago). But regardless of accent, the g is a hard one and the s is silent. “Gee-lane.”
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So that is one knowable thing about this cryptic person, and even it doesn’t feel entirely firm, much like our sense of her. The story of the alleged number two to an equally shadowy man, down to her whereabouts, keeps expanding and contracting, managing to evade understanding.
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