Yes, it “shouldn’t” be there, but let me tell you why it is.

My name is pronounced Qué-lyn. Like the Spanish word qué? + and the English word lean [as in lean back].

Linguistically speaking, the accent shouldn’t be there. With stress on the first syllable, Kelyn behaves like a palabra grave, and graves ending in -n don’t take a written accent.

And yet.

People with “weird” names will probably understand my plight… After years of creative mispronunciations—Kay-lynn, Kay-lean, Kelly, Ku-lean you name it—I added the é during my adolescence, not to follow Spanish orthographic rules, but to gently push people toward the right stress and vowel quality.

The accent doesn’t change how my name is pronounced. It just helps people get there faster.

The é stays, not because it’s required, but because it works.

—Kélyn Yohana Salazar-Hernández