Thomas Jefferson University apologizes after viral pronunciation mistakes at graduation

Thomas Jefferson University apologizes after the names of some nursing program graduates were pronounced unrecognizably at their graduation, as seen in videos of the ceremony that have since gone viral.

Pronunciation errors at the Jefferson College of Nursing graduation ceremony, which took place on Thursday, according to the university websitewere attributed to the phonetic spellings written on the speaker’s cards, the school said in a statement on X on Friday.

For example, graduate Sarah Virginia Brennan’s name was pronounced “Sayer Oo-voon Geen-goo Bree-none”, according to a video of the ceremony. Maeve Elizabeth was pronounced “May-vee Lee Zu-beth.” Stephanie’s first name was pronounced “Eff-uni” and Jessica, “Jay-sic-u”.

At one point, the speaker mispronounced “Thomas” as “Tom-mu-may” — before the graduate could be heard correcting the pronunciation.

“Thomas Jefferson University leadership and faculty extend our sincerest apologies for the incorrect pronunciations of the names of several of our nursing students during our recent graduation ceremony,” the university said in the statement. “This ceremony is a celebration of our students’ significant achievements, and each graduate deserves to have their name honored correctly on this crucial day.”

The graduates apparently walked across the stage in alphabetical order. An almost five-minute video of speaker announcing graduates with surnames that begin with “B” or “C” had more than 370,000 views as of Friday afternoon. Another video, apparently taken from the crowd at the ceremony, received more than 2.4 million views, 230,000 likes and 2,000 comments.

“I can honestly say… The Grads will never forget this moment…,” said one commenter.

“This can’t be real. In this case, SNL needs to recreate this,” added another.

“Sarah was like… you mean me?” wrote one TikTok user, with several crying and laughing emojis.

The ceremony saw a change of speaker as the last names reached “L”, and the original speaker apologized to the crowd, as seen in another video of the ceremony shared on TikTok.

“And I apologize for the phonetic spelling or pronunciation of the names that were on the cards. I would have been better off just reading the book. My apologies, graduates”, they said.

The university reiterated the cause of the errors, stating: “The pronunciation errors occurred due to the way the phonetic spelling was presented on the speaker cards, which was confirmed when the presenter apologized during the ceremony.”