Niamh Shackleton
Team USA star Alysa Liu has revealed the correct pronunciation of her name — something which she insisted that she doesn't expect people to know.
Liu was the name on everyone's lips at the recent Winter Olympics and successfully brought home not one, but two gold medals.
Liu is of Chinese heritage, and her father moved to America through Operation Yellowbird in 1989.
While her dad has been in the US for decades, Chinese government spies were said to still have been tracking him as recent as the months running up to Liu's recent Olympics stint.
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With her Chinese heritage in mind, some people have been saying her name wrong, but the 20-year-old ice skating star understands that her name isn't the easier of monikers to pronounce.
Liu sat down with Newsweek to discuss the pronunciation of her name and revealed how it should actually be said.
Her family call her 'Ah-lee-sa' and her surname should be pronounced 'Lee-oh', but she admitted that her friends simply pronounce her name like everyone else; that being 'Ah-liss-uh'.
While people have been saying her name wrong, Liu insists that she doesn't mind.
"I personally don’t care," she shared. "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."
Liu's comments about her name come after she was forced to issue a plea to the public after she was met by fans with cameras at the airport.
In a scary ordeal, the young woman said she'd been chased to her car at the airport and asked fans to respect her personal space in the future.
Taking to Instagram, Liu shared: "So I land at the airport, & there's a crowd waiting at the exit with cameras & things for me to sign. All up in my personal space. Someone chased me to my car bruh. Please do not do that to me."
A totally understandable request, if you ask me!
Liu briefly retired from iceskating after her Olympic debut in 2022, which her father said was due to 'trauma'.
"She became really unhappy," he told USA TODAY Sports. "She avoided the ice rink at all costs. She's traumatized. She was just traumatized. She was suffering from PTSD, and she wouldn't go near the ice rink."
It wasn't until 2024 that the Olympic star decided to put her skates back on again.
Sharing why she decided to return to the sport, Liu told the news outlet: "I learned that I really just want to make art and also look at other people's art and appreciate art honestly. I learned what I like, what I don't like."