Brontë is the family name of three sisters from Yorkshire, in the north of England, who wrote some of the most famous novels in English. Charlotte Brontë (1816–55) wrote Jane Eyre, Emily Brontë (1818–48) wrote Wuthering Heights, and Anne Brontë (1820–49) wrote The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. People also say the Brontës for the whole family, including their brother Branwell. The name is said in two beats, roughly BRON-tay; the two dots over the e (a diaeresis) are there so you do not swallow the last sound and say bront. Their father, Patrick, used Brontë as a rendering of Brunty or Prunty, from the Irish Ó Proinntigh, descendant of a person named Proinnteach, Generous. He first registered at Cambridge in 1802 as Branty or Brunty, and formally changed the spelling later. Why he changed it is not one clean story: some say he wished to hide humble origins; as a man of letters he knew classical Greek, and other guesses exist. What students need is the name as it stands, the two-syllable sound, and the three books. It is a name, not a common noun.