Since winning the gold medal in figure skating at the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026, Alysa Liu seems to be everywhere. From going viral with her playful routine to PinkPantheress’ “Stateside” to defending fellow athlete Eileen Gu from her detractors, her star couldn’t shine any brighter. But despite her being a major figure in sports and pop culture at the moment, it seems like many of us have been mispronouncing her name the entire time. Luckily, she has now set the record straight.
In an interview with Newsweek, Liu was asked how to correctly pronounce her name, as it seems to have been mispronounced in the media several times over the last few weeks. “Technically, this is how my family says my name ‘Ah-lee-sa Lee-oh.’ That’s technically how you say my name. But ‘Ah-liss-uh’ is how my friends call me. And that’s how the world calls me.”
Liu says that she understands her name, particularly her last name, can be hard to pronounce. “I personally don’t care,” she shares. “Technically, the right way is ‘Lee-oh,’ but that can be hard to pronounce. I don’t expect people to know how to say that.”
Despite Liu’s laidback attitude about how people pronounce her name, fans still want to make the effort to say it right, especially since people have done it for other celebrities with tricky last names. “If the world can figure out [Timothy] Chalamet, they can learn Liu,” one commenter rightly points out. Additionally, learning this will surely come in handy as many people around the world share her surname. According to Ancestry, Liu is one of the most common last names in China, as well as the Chinese diaspora around the world.
You can watch Alysa Liu explain how to pronounce her name in the video below.
Olympic gold-winning figure skater Alysa Liu explained how to correctly pronounce her name during an interview.
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Sources: Alysa Liu Stands Up for Eileen Gu After ‘Hypocritical’ Comments from Critics About Representing China
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