"There is some kind of a creative power there, to have an unusual name."
December 23, 2022 5:51 AM Subscribe
Even in a melting pot, uncommon names can boil over From WNYC/Gothamist: Conversations with four New Yorkers who maneuver through life with names that affect their sense of place and community
Title quote taken from Latif (pronounced LUH-tif) Nasser, science reporter and host of WNYC’s RadioLab
Title quote taken from Latif (pronounced LUH-tif) Nasser, science reporter and host of WNYC’s RadioLab
At the other end of the spectrum, I am Matt Brown. My name is so common that it is functionally unGoogleable, I constantly get other people's email, and the other day when I went to sign in at the pool to swim laps, the lifeguard was confused because there was already another Matt Brown signed in (out of only 8 available lanes) and a third person piped up to ask if either of us was the local chef in our small town who is also named Matt Brown (we were not).
In spite of all that it sounds infinitely easier than what these folks are going through with their names.
posted by saladin at 6:54 AM on December 23, 2022 [9 favorites]
In spite of all that it sounds infinitely easier than what these folks are going through with their names.
posted by saladin at 6:54 AM on December 23, 2022 [9 favorites]
"Constantly correcting people on the pronunciation of your name is psychologically taxing,"
I have an unusual name and I agree with this. What was interesting though is that as soon as I became a boss, people (especially older white men, who had consistently struggled before) stopped struggling with my name's pronunciation. As soon as I started overseeing and being responsible for distributing a large amount of money as part of my job, no one ever got my name wrong again. I think this speaks to mispronunciation of names being more than a "this name is different" - I think if people think it is important to them to get the name right, they will figure out a way to do it. I think about that a lot with other people's names that are unusual and take notes when I meet them on how they pronounce their name - because whether they can offer me anything or not, I want to show them that I value them.
posted by Toddles at 7:07 AM on December 23, 2022 [96 favorites]
I have an unusual name and I agree with this. What was interesting though is that as soon as I became a boss, people (especially older white men, who had consistently struggled before) stopped struggling with my name's pronunciation. As soon as I started overseeing and being responsible for distributing a large amount of money as part of my job, no one ever got my name wrong again. I think this speaks to mispronunciation of names being more than a "this name is different" - I think if people think it is important to them to get the name right, they will figure out a way to do it. I think about that a lot with other people's names that are unusual and take notes when I meet them on how they pronounce their name - because whether they can offer me anything or not, I want to show them that I value them.
posted by Toddles at 7:07 AM on December 23, 2022 [96 favorites]
It took me a while to embrace my long, difficult to spell and pronounce, "ethnic" but still Caucasian names. Once I accepted that I was kind of an aberrant weirdo for other reasons, the names started to make more sense. I do have a job where lots of 'verbal orders' are given over the phone, so spelling my names via the NATO alphabet is an everyday thing. I have vivid memories of my dad doing this with our surname when I was a teenager and being SO EMBARASSED for some reason.
My weirdly named boyfriend introduced me to the "Starbucks name" - for a one-off interaction just adopt a basic name that's easy to spell and pronounce. At starbucks I'm Jen. In life I'm Genevieve. Removes maybe 70% of the irritation from having a weird name.
posted by genmonster at 7:09 AM on December 23, 2022 [16 favorites]
My weirdly named boyfriend introduced me to the "Starbucks name" - for a one-off interaction just adopt a basic name that's easy to spell and pronounce. At starbucks I'm Jen. In life I'm Genevieve. Removes maybe 70% of the irritation from having a weird name.
posted by genmonster at 7:09 AM on December 23, 2022 [16 favorites]
"Starbucks name"
Yes! Just to add, I do this too! At Starbucks and other places like that, I go by my very simple middle name.
posted by Toddles at 7:14 AM on December 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
Yes! Just to add, I do this too! At Starbucks and other places like that, I go by my very simple middle name.
posted by Toddles at 7:14 AM on December 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
Man, "boat maker" is such a beautiful idea, connecting people all over the place...
posted by lauranesson at 7:26 AM on December 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by lauranesson at 7:26 AM on December 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
I have an extremely common first name, but with a slightly different spelling off by just one letter from English normal. People (and robots!) all cartoonishly over-mispronounce it as a result. Even my manager at a recent job did this consistently.
posted by migurski at 7:29 AM on December 23, 2022
posted by migurski at 7:29 AM on December 23, 2022
Starbucks name
Years ago my wife worked with a hilarious Japanese guy named Toshikazu whose Starbucks name was "Giancarlo."
posted by saladin at 7:34 AM on December 23, 2022 [46 favorites]
Years ago my wife worked with a hilarious Japanese guy named Toshikazu whose Starbucks name was "Giancarlo."
posted by saladin at 7:34 AM on December 23, 2022 [46 favorites]
I recently changed my name, and in my mind it is a totally normal word. Almost no one pronounces it right on the first try, and almost no one even bothers to ask -- bunch a'dang Guessers in my life. (it's been interesting to see the linguistic assumptions people make, tho!)
I've been giving the full name at coffee shops etc because it feels good to hear it, but at some point I'll probably just switch to first letter (Vee) for simplicity.
posted by curious nu at 7:39 AM on December 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
I've been giving the full name at coffee shops etc because it feels good to hear it, but at some point I'll probably just switch to first letter (Vee) for simplicity.
posted by curious nu at 7:39 AM on December 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
I love having a shibboleth last name. I have coworkers I don't like who I still haven't given the correct pronunciation to.
posted by cobaltnine at 7:40 AM on December 23, 2022 [13 favorites]
posted by cobaltnine at 7:40 AM on December 23, 2022 [13 favorites]
I have a hilariously French surname, which is... entertaining here in East Tennessee. I guarantee I'm the only one in town.
posted by workerant at 7:41 AM on December 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by workerant at 7:41 AM on December 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
I felt absolutely awful when a coworker changed his Chinese name to an English one after a year in our department. I'd worked really hard to get the pronunciation right and I literally could not hear a difference between the way I said it and the way he said it. But it didn't take long to realize that it wasn't about me, and that his comfort with what he was called was more important than my wounded pride.
Not long after that, my chamber choir premiered a work in Cantonese by a Chinese-American composer. He had provided us with a transliteration of the lyrics in the International Phonetic Alphabet and a recording of himself speaking the words very slowly, and we worked our butts off for a whole semester to get it right. He came to the dress rehearsal, and we were really eager to find out how we'd done. He laughed, shook his head, and said, "Not even close." That made me feel better in retrospect about my coworker's name.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:45 AM on December 23, 2022 [12 favorites]
Not long after that, my chamber choir premiered a work in Cantonese by a Chinese-American composer. He had provided us with a transliteration of the lyrics in the International Phonetic Alphabet and a recording of himself speaking the words very slowly, and we worked our butts off for a whole semester to get it right. He came to the dress rehearsal, and we were really eager to find out how we'd done. He laughed, shook his head, and said, "Not even close." That made me feel better in retrospect about my coworker's name.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:45 AM on December 23, 2022 [12 favorites]
I have a Mc[something] surname, which tends to trip the Mc[Generic] breaker in people's brains, and they start filling in whichever Mc/Mac first comes to mind. Macarthur, McGregor, Macallan, I think I got McFeeney once (which I didn't realize was a thing).
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 7:55 AM on December 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 7:55 AM on December 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
As a kid I knew two people with the surname Seguin. One was my doctor, who pronounced it /seh-GAN/ (rhymes with sedan) and the other was a classmate, who pronounced it /SEE-gwin/ (like sequin with a 'G').
At the time I thought it was funny that one (or both!) of them was pronouncing it 'wrong', but now I see it as an interesting intersection of age/class/prestige and all the issues mentioned in the article.
Now I know two people whose own families can't agree on a common pronunciation of their surname, and I wonder if down the line some may alter the spelling to clarify their preferred pronunciation.
posted by SaltySalticid at 7:56 AM on December 23, 2022 [4 favorites]
At the time I thought it was funny that one (or both!) of them was pronouncing it 'wrong', but now I see it as an interesting intersection of age/class/prestige and all the issues mentioned in the article.
Now I know two people whose own families can't agree on a common pronunciation of their surname, and I wonder if down the line some may alter the spelling to clarify their preferred pronunciation.
posted by SaltySalticid at 7:56 AM on December 23, 2022 [4 favorites]
Re: Mc[something] names, my 5yo kid recently named a new teddy bear. He said something like /Freddy ficknometer/ to my ear, and I asked him to write it down. To my fascination he wrote "Freddy FcNomiter", clearly based on the Mac/Mc type (which I didn't even know he was aware of).
posted by SaltySalticid at 8:03 AM on December 23, 2022 [18 favorites]
posted by SaltySalticid at 8:03 AM on December 23, 2022 [18 favorites]
A long time ago when I was working as a Tech at Tektronix the lead Tech, who was from Japan, brought around a couple of visiting Sony Executives just so they could hear me doing a Japanese song that I had learned in Cub Scouts and still remembered for some reason. They thought it was hilarious.
Sho, sho, sho jo jee
Sho jo jee no nee wa wa...
posted by aleph at 8:04 AM on December 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
Sho, sho, sho jo jee
Sho jo jee no nee wa wa...
posted by aleph at 8:04 AM on December 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
I wonder if down the line some may alter the spelling to clarify their preferred pronunciation.
Like Shelley Fabares and Nanette Fabray.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:09 AM on December 23, 2022 [4 favorites]
Like Shelley Fabares and Nanette Fabray.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:09 AM on December 23, 2022 [4 favorites]
We have a bimonthly meeting at my org where anniversaries are celebrated. Someone from HR leads them. Every time she comes across a name that is "unusual" she says "I'm sorry I'm going to mispronounce your name", multiple times in a meeting (it's a big org). I keep thinking "you know who is on the list ahead of the meeting, ask them how they pronounce it, and get it right during the meeting." I think I'll send her this article, and include that suggestion.
I also tried to start a thing where people put their pronunciations in their email signature or company directory entry. My surname isn't really difficult, it was more of a principle thing. So far it's just me and one office administrator :-|
posted by Gorgik at 8:11 AM on December 23, 2022 [9 favorites]
I also tried to start a thing where people put their pronunciations in their email signature or company directory entry. My surname isn't really difficult, it was more of a principle thing. So far it's just me and one office administrator :-|
posted by Gorgik at 8:11 AM on December 23, 2022 [9 favorites]
My last name is an unusual Italian one that retains a silent g in the middle (think Tagliano, but much much less common), and it is pretty much unpronounceable if you don't happen to a) correctly identify it as Italian and b) know that specific rule. (I would love it if the first thing that came to mind for most English speakers wasn't a slang term for a prostitute, but that's life for you.)
I think about it when these conversations come up, though, because it's different from the position that, say, Tiffany Tsung / 宗义婵 occupies--because Italians, in an American context, are more or less assimilated into whiteness. And anyway, I only had the one Italian great-grandfather; the name is essentially an accident of patronymics and doesn't actually communicate much about even my subculture within American whiteness.
So my unpronounceable, unusual name is sometimes a mild annoyance, sometimes a mild advantage, but not necessarily something that I feel I have to alter in order to control how people I meet perceive me. It's useful to use my experiences with it as an impetus to do my best to pronounce other people's names as they would like them pronounced and make exactly as big a deal of them as the person I'm interacting with indicates they'd like me to.
And I am always delighted when someone either intuitively knows how to pronounce my name without asking or remembers immediately how to pronounce it after asking. It's not a big deal, but it's a nice little zing of recognition when it happens. I try and pass that on wherever I can.
posted by sciatrix at 8:26 AM on December 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
I think about it when these conversations come up, though, because it's different from the position that, say, Tiffany Tsung / 宗义婵 occupies--because Italians, in an American context, are more or less assimilated into whiteness. And anyway, I only had the one Italian great-grandfather; the name is essentially an accident of patronymics and doesn't actually communicate much about even my subculture within American whiteness.
So my unpronounceable, unusual name is sometimes a mild annoyance, sometimes a mild advantage, but not necessarily something that I feel I have to alter in order to control how people I meet perceive me. It's useful to use my experiences with it as an impetus to do my best to pronounce other people's names as they would like them pronounced and make exactly as big a deal of them as the person I'm interacting with indicates they'd like me to.
And I am always delighted when someone either intuitively knows how to pronounce my name without asking or remembers immediately how to pronounce it after asking. It's not a big deal, but it's a nice little zing of recognition when it happens. I try and pass that on wherever I can.
posted by sciatrix at 8:26 AM on December 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
What the hell, have my standard riff about my name, which I use online.
It is impossible for a high proportion of people to grasp-- I can say it, spell it, and show it to people in print, and they still get it wrong. People can be friends who've known me for years, but they don't know my name.
My name is supposed of ordinary English phonemes, and pronounced as it is spelled.
To a large extent, the problem is that there are more common variants which are slightly different.
If someone on a help line gets my name right, I thank them. It seems to cheer them up.
At one point, I was thinking about what I would do differently if I had a greatly extended lifespan, and my first thought was "Do I really want to spend a thousand years saying "Le B-as-in-Boy O V-as-in-Victor"?", and the answer was "No". Unfortunately, my first choice was Goldberg (I'm fine with having a Jewish name), but Goldberg or Goldburg?
People from the Midwest seem to be more likely to get my name right. I don't know whether it's a better tradition of courtesy, or there are fewer Jews there so what they hear isn't overlaid with what they expect to hear.
I believe there's an important lesson. I defend my name, but how much of the world are people (certainly including me) getting wrong and missing out on because it isn't what we expect?
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 8:27 AM on December 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
It is impossible for a high proportion of people to grasp-- I can say it, spell it, and show it to people in print, and they still get it wrong. People can be friends who've known me for years, but they don't know my name.
My name is supposed of ordinary English phonemes, and pronounced as it is spelled.
To a large extent, the problem is that there are more common variants which are slightly different.
If someone on a help line gets my name right, I thank them. It seems to cheer them up.
At one point, I was thinking about what I would do differently if I had a greatly extended lifespan, and my first thought was "Do I really want to spend a thousand years saying "Le B-as-in-Boy O V-as-in-Victor"?", and the answer was "No". Unfortunately, my first choice was Goldberg (I'm fine with having a Jewish name), but Goldberg or Goldburg?
People from the Midwest seem to be more likely to get my name right. I don't know whether it's a better tradition of courtesy, or there are fewer Jews there so what they hear isn't overlaid with what they expect to hear.
I believe there's an important lesson. I defend my name, but how much of the world are people (certainly including me) getting wrong and missing out on because it isn't what we expect?
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 8:27 AM on December 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
The one that gets me is where they misspell my given name in email replies to me.
I sign all my email with my given name. It's also in my .sig. And I'm not exactly unknown in my profession, or on my campus.
I wouldn't care if the misspelling weren't so... it's just aesthetically ugly, which my actual name is not.
posted by humbug at 8:29 AM on December 23, 2022 [11 favorites]
I sign all my email with my given name. It's also in my .sig. And I'm not exactly unknown in my profession, or on my campus.
I wouldn't care if the misspelling weren't so... it's just aesthetically ugly, which my actual name is not.
posted by humbug at 8:29 AM on December 23, 2022 [11 favorites]
My work directory lets people record themselves pronouncing their name so you can rehearse with them before you interact. It's great! But there are still as many pronunciations of my colleague's name as there are members of our team. I think I'm the closest to his recording!
I took my husband's last name when I married and our kids have it too. It's one of the most common Chinese names. I like having it but I do worry it'll make their lives harder. It's very easy to pronounce and spell, but their heritage is obvious, with all the good and bad that entails.
posted by potrzebie at 8:32 AM on December 23, 2022 [6 favorites]
I took my husband's last name when I married and our kids have it too. It's one of the most common Chinese names. I like having it but I do worry it'll make their lives harder. It's very easy to pronounce and spell, but their heritage is obvious, with all the good and bad that entails.
posted by potrzebie at 8:32 AM on December 23, 2022 [6 favorites]
I was born with a long Spanish name that I had anglicized when I turned 18 because I felt no connection to the Spanish side of my family. It caused no end of confusion as a child and I don't regret it changing it. However, it has turned into a PITA because I didn't keep a copy of my birth certificate and name change order, so now I have to retrieve them in order to update some other necessary paperwork for employment sake. I'm in my mid-50s now and nothing about the retrieval process of decades-old paperwork moves quickly or cheaply.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 8:39 AM on December 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 8:39 AM on December 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
Constantly correcting people on the pronunciation of your name is psychologically taxing.
And sometimes you can't escape that even if you do have a "white" name.
My surname, "Wadsworth", is....well, it's not common, but it's English. If you've seen Clue or you've heard of the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, or of the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, you know how to say it ("WAWDS-worth"). But I regularly get people trying to call me "WAAHDS-worth" or even "WADES-worth". And I've started instinctively spelling my name out when I give my name, because too many people asked how to spell it when I said it.
I'm honestly more baffled than offended. Where I grew up (a small town in Eastern Connecticut), people got my name no problem; but when I was a kid I had friends with surnames like Pawelkiewicz or first names like Krishna (for reals), and they were the ones whose names always got butchered while my own name was fine. But for some reason now my name baffles people.
The flip side, though, is that I had friends with surnames like Pawelkiewicz and first names like Krishna, but they were kids just like me and I grew up not really associating names with "culture". I think I was in college the first time I even encountered the notion of name-as-signifier - a couple of other kids in my dorm were discussing someone else, and overheard one speculating whether they were Jewish or not and made an assessment based on their last name. I was honestly baffled and interrupted to ask "hang on, how do you know?"
"....Their name is Cohen."
"...So? That's just their name." It took them a good five minutes to explain to me that there are certain names that are more commonly found among certain groups than others.
...This was also when I was in drama school, when people were doing all kinds of things with their names as a sort of Branding Exercise; people were trying to figure out what would be the Most Awesome Stage Name so they could start using it. Word quickly spread that there was one lucky drama student whose name honestly and sincerely was "Sabre Schnitzer".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:40 AM on December 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
And sometimes you can't escape that even if you do have a "white" name.
My surname, "Wadsworth", is....well, it's not common, but it's English. If you've seen Clue or you've heard of the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, or of the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, you know how to say it ("WAWDS-worth"). But I regularly get people trying to call me "WAAHDS-worth" or even "WADES-worth". And I've started instinctively spelling my name out when I give my name, because too many people asked how to spell it when I said it.
I'm honestly more baffled than offended. Where I grew up (a small town in Eastern Connecticut), people got my name no problem; but when I was a kid I had friends with surnames like Pawelkiewicz or first names like Krishna (for reals), and they were the ones whose names always got butchered while my own name was fine. But for some reason now my name baffles people.
The flip side, though, is that I had friends with surnames like Pawelkiewicz and first names like Krishna, but they were kids just like me and I grew up not really associating names with "culture". I think I was in college the first time I even encountered the notion of name-as-signifier - a couple of other kids in my dorm were discussing someone else, and overheard one speculating whether they were Jewish or not and made an assessment based on their last name. I was honestly baffled and interrupted to ask "hang on, how do you know?"
"....Their name is Cohen."
"...So? That's just their name." It took them a good five minutes to explain to me that there are certain names that are more commonly found among certain groups than others.
...This was also when I was in drama school, when people were doing all kinds of things with their names as a sort of Branding Exercise; people were trying to figure out what would be the Most Awesome Stage Name so they could start using it. Word quickly spread that there was one lucky drama student whose name honestly and sincerely was "Sabre Schnitzer".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:40 AM on December 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
And I've started instinctively spelling my name out when I give my name, because too many people asked how to spell it when I said it.
The only way my name could be more common in the English-speaking world is if it were Jane Doe, and while I don't get mispronunciations I do get some pretty bizarre misspellings. So much so that if you tried to pronounce it the way some people spell it, it would sound completely different. So I've also taken to pre-emptively spelling it out over the phone on business-type calls.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:52 AM on December 23, 2022
The only way my name could be more common in the English-speaking world is if it were Jane Doe, and while I don't get mispronunciations I do get some pretty bizarre misspellings. So much so that if you tried to pronounce it the way some people spell it, it would sound completely different. So I've also taken to pre-emptively spelling it out over the phone on business-type calls.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:52 AM on December 23, 2022
The one that gets me is where they misspell my given name in email replies to me.
I sign all my email with my given name. It's also in my .sig. And I'm not exactly unknown in my profession, or on my campus.
I wouldn't care if the misspelling weren't so... it's just aesthetically ugly, which my actual name is not.
This is my life. I have a reasonably common anglo name, which no one struggles to pronounce but easily 2/3 of people misspell. Think, Christopher vs Kristopher vs Kristofer -- all phonetically fine, but for whatever reason people default to the unusual spellings instead of the common spelling that I use. (And don't get me started about the people who shorten it, too, often while simultaneously misspelling it.) It's all fairly harmless, but I do notice it as a signal of respect/disrespect.
My partner has a name that English speakers struggle both to pronounce and spell, and it's always interesting (in an often angering kind of way) who cares enough to try and who doesn't. It's ok to get names wrong on the first try, but you need to be visibly trying, and to pay attention and do better on subsequent efforts.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:54 AM on December 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
I sign all my email with my given name. It's also in my .sig. And I'm not exactly unknown in my profession, or on my campus.
I wouldn't care if the misspelling weren't so... it's just aesthetically ugly, which my actual name is not.
This is my life. I have a reasonably common anglo name, which no one struggles to pronounce but easily 2/3 of people misspell. Think, Christopher vs Kristopher vs Kristofer -- all phonetically fine, but for whatever reason people default to the unusual spellings instead of the common spelling that I use. (And don't get me started about the people who shorten it, too, often while simultaneously misspelling it.) It's all fairly harmless, but I do notice it as a signal of respect/disrespect.
My partner has a name that English speakers struggle both to pronounce and spell, and it's always interesting (in an often angering kind of way) who cares enough to try and who doesn't. It's ok to get names wrong on the first try, but you need to be visibly trying, and to pay attention and do better on subsequent efforts.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:54 AM on December 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
"Zhu said the benefits of an Americanized name clash with a full scope of ethnic representation. The best manner of addressing the push and pull experienced with having an ethnic-sounding name in the U.S., he said, relies heavily on personal choice."
I find this super-interesting as an immigrant kid. My parents gave me a traditional family but Anglicized* first name, for the explicit purpose of wanting me to fit in. Everything they did in those early years was geared towards wanting to fit in. Ethnic representation didn't factor in at all.
Their approach was typical of their circle of friends as well. Everyone just wanted to belong in their new land, and cause as few waves as possible.
I wonder if there's a generational shift in immigrant populations, or if certain groups feel that 'push and pull' while others flat out don't. It's an interesting question.
*Well, they thought they did. They took the family name and changed it to what they thought was the English version, only they didn't actually look it up, so I got the French version, so I still have this very-similar-but-still-different spelling they wanted to avoid. Oops.
posted by Capt. Renault at 9:23 AM on December 23, 2022
I find this super-interesting as an immigrant kid. My parents gave me a traditional family but Anglicized* first name, for the explicit purpose of wanting me to fit in. Everything they did in those early years was geared towards wanting to fit in. Ethnic representation didn't factor in at all.
Their approach was typical of their circle of friends as well. Everyone just wanted to belong in their new land, and cause as few waves as possible.
I wonder if there's a generational shift in immigrant populations, or if certain groups feel that 'push and pull' while others flat out don't. It's an interesting question.
*Well, they thought they did. They took the family name and changed it to what they thought was the English version, only they didn't actually look it up, so I got the French version, so I still have this very-similar-but-still-different spelling they wanted to avoid. Oops.
posted by Capt. Renault at 9:23 AM on December 23, 2022
Oh man. My surname is seven-hyphen-six letters in Danish, and nine-hyphen-six in the standard transliteration into English alphabet. It is... not very phonetic in English, and involves several sounds not found in most English dialects. Spelling it out in NATO in every phone interaction is my life, and it takes a while. The worst was at primary school, where we had multiple choice tests with an OMR answer sheet. You filled in your name by filling out little pill shapes for each letter, one by one. I got meaningfully less time to actually answer the questions in those tests than my classmates.
Having recently gotten married, my husband and I are both planning to combine our names, so it'll be seven/nine-hyphen-four, with the front half very Danish and the back half technically Scottish. I suspect this will not help matters.
posted by Dysk at 9:24 AM on December 23, 2022 [7 favorites]
Having recently gotten married, my husband and I are both planning to combine our names, so it'll be seven/nine-hyphen-four, with the front half very Danish and the back half technically Scottish. I suspect this will not help matters.
posted by Dysk at 9:24 AM on December 23, 2022 [7 favorites]
Think, Christopher vs Kristopher vs Kristofer -- all phonetically fine, but for whatever reason people default to the unusual spellings instead of the common spelling that I use. (And don't get me started about the people who shorten it, too, often while simultaneously misspelling it.) It's all fairly harmless, but I do notice it as a signal of respect/disrespect.
Interesting theory about why that may be the case....
My first name has had a "common" spelling that I use, but there are a couple of frequent "variants" (think "Christopher" vs. "Kristopher"; I'll use that in my analogy). For most of my life whenever people used my name, they would default to the "Christopher" spelling, which was how I spelled it so that was fine.
But then suddenly it seemed that almost universally everyone started assuming "Kristopher" was the default, and I had to start correcting them. And it was always that one specific variant - no one ever assumed "Christoffer" or "Kristoffer", it was always "Kristopher" and I would have to correct them to "Christopher". And they all started doing it at about the same time - I could almost pinpoint the month it started happening. It was bizarre; I started joking that some weird memo had gone out that I'd missed, where the entire world had now switched to assuming that "Kristopher" was the new default spelling for that name. Years later I finally figured out what happened - I learned that right at about that time when everyone started assuming I spelled my name "Kristopher", there was a person with that name on American Idol who spelled it "Kristopher".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:27 AM on December 23, 2022 [8 favorites]
Interesting theory about why that may be the case....
My first name has had a "common" spelling that I use, but there are a couple of frequent "variants" (think "Christopher" vs. "Kristopher"; I'll use that in my analogy). For most of my life whenever people used my name, they would default to the "Christopher" spelling, which was how I spelled it so that was fine.
But then suddenly it seemed that almost universally everyone started assuming "Kristopher" was the default, and I had to start correcting them. And it was always that one specific variant - no one ever assumed "Christoffer" or "Kristoffer", it was always "Kristopher" and I would have to correct them to "Christopher". And they all started doing it at about the same time - I could almost pinpoint the month it started happening. It was bizarre; I started joking that some weird memo had gone out that I'd missed, where the entire world had now switched to assuming that "Kristopher" was the new default spelling for that name. Years later I finally figured out what happened - I learned that right at about that time when everyone started assuming I spelled my name "Kristopher", there was a person with that name on American Idol who spelled it "Kristopher".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:27 AM on December 23, 2022 [8 favorites]
There are other downsides to having a very common name, especially if you are in competition for the same position.
In a more MeFicentric realm, I recently met a young woman named Jessamyn and mentioned to her that she was the only the second person of that name I had ever met; her eyes widened and she said she had never met anyone else with the name. I mentioned this encounter to MeFi's Own, and she revealed that there is another Jessamyn in her town of <5000 "Their name is Cohen."
I knew a Cohen in university who, because someone miskeyed his name on a registration document as ""Chen," spent four years politely refusing invitations from the Asian Students' Association.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:28 AM on December 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
In a more MeFicentric realm, I recently met a young woman named Jessamyn and mentioned to her that she was the only the second person of that name I had ever met; her eyes widened and she said she had never met anyone else with the name. I mentioned this encounter to MeFi's Own, and she revealed that there is another Jessamyn in her town of <5000 "Their name is Cohen."
I knew a Cohen in university who, because someone miskeyed his name on a registration document as ""Chen," spent four years politely refusing invitations from the Asian Students' Association.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:28 AM on December 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
I can only imagine the confusion felt by Thai people who have names that are perfectly acceptable in their native language, but are a nightmare in English: Thai words with unfortunate English meanings. I'm sure that's not the only language with problems, but it is the one that leaps to mind first.
Are there any counter-examples where the English name turns out to be something off-color or rude in another language (ex. Belgium acc. to Douglas Adams, who may have been pulling our leg).
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 9:32 AM on December 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
Are there any counter-examples where the English name turns out to be something off-color or rude in another language (ex. Belgium acc. to Douglas Adams, who may have been pulling our leg).
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 9:32 AM on December 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
I'll go to a place that wants to write my name down so they can shout it out later and tell them my name and they'll say "how do you spell it" and I'm like just .... this isn't the DMV. You can write down whatever you want, just as long as you say it the same way I just said it to you so my coffee doesn't get cold.
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:35 AM on December 23, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:35 AM on December 23, 2022 [4 favorites]
I have a friend named Lisa, who for some reason keeps getting called Liza. She memorized an inverted version of Liza Minelli's "LIza With a Z" to sing to them when it happens.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:53 AM on December 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:53 AM on December 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
And sometimes you can't escape that even if you do have a "white" name.
I had to help one of my younger colleagues through the name of a client, which he had only seen written out but now needed to talk to him on the phone.
The name: "Reginald".
posted by AzraelBrown at 10:06 AM on December 23, 2022 [6 favorites]
I had to help one of my younger colleagues through the name of a client, which he had only seen written out but now needed to talk to him on the phone.
The name: "Reginald".
posted by AzraelBrown at 10:06 AM on December 23, 2022 [6 favorites]
My last name is French, du Toit, and apparently when my ancestors came to South Africa the "oi" sound in French was pronounced to rhyme with "bouy" and not as it is now ("wah").
So I pronounce my surname "du Touy" and not "du Twah".
Since apartheid is no longer a thing we have a lot of people from Congo and other francophone countries, who for some reason always perk up when they hear my surname, but of course from their point of view I'm pronouncing it wrong 🙂
And they tend to be disappointed when they learn I can't speak French either.
Also kind of creepy how often strangers have assumed I'm French even without knowing my name.
posted by Zumbador at 10:24 AM on December 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
So I pronounce my surname "du Touy" and not "du Twah".
Since apartheid is no longer a thing we have a lot of people from Congo and other francophone countries, who for some reason always perk up when they hear my surname, but of course from their point of view I'm pronouncing it wrong 🙂
And they tend to be disappointed when they learn I can't speak French either.
Also kind of creepy how often strangers have assumed I'm French even without knowing my name.
posted by Zumbador at 10:24 AM on December 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
I have an unusual first name, two middle names, and an unusual last name. I have become very good at spelling my name, slowly and clearly, over the phone.
posted by daisystomper at 10:30 AM on December 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by daisystomper at 10:30 AM on December 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
My (Persian) name consists of two syllables that are also both common English phonemes. A full half of the time I meet someone, I will say my name to them, and they’ll immediately repeat it back to me with an entirely different vowel and then continue to struggle forever, to the point that I start apologizing for correcting them so much. It makes no sense.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 10:32 AM on December 23, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 10:32 AM on December 23, 2022 [6 favorites]
EmpressCallipygos, a family member is named Christina using the traditional Ch spelling (not Kristina). I've been making several phone calls for this family member, giving customer service agents her name and date of birth. Every single person (except a woman I could identify as probably being older by the sound of her voice) immediately asked, "okay, that's Christina with a K, right.?". Like WHEN did the assumption turn to Christina being spelled with a K and why did it seem to happen all at once?!
posted by flamk at 10:38 AM on December 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by flamk at 10:38 AM on December 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
My dad made up my name, and I love it but dang, I wish my first conversation with everyone didn’t start with, “no, that’s not it.” It’s two short syllables, sounds like about 10 other simple names, and it’s like seeing inside people’s brains, which connections they make. A famous singer, a famous poem, a famous song … I unreasonably hate most of the names that people confuse it with. Also it’s arguably misspelled, so if people pronounce it right & then I spell it for them they start pronouncing it wrong. Or people assume that I’ve misspelled it, and literally add a letter to turn it into some other (more common) name. My last name is also unusual (i’m the only person in the world with my full name, which makes me more googleable than I’d like), but I don’t for the most part care what people do with my last name, I’m just fighting for my first name to be right.
posted by anshuman at 10:41 AM on December 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by anshuman at 10:41 AM on December 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
I am feeling so much better. My slightly rare first name is phonetically spelled and easy to pronounce, but people so constantly misspell and mispronounce it, often people I have known for years. I too have to spell it out, and they still get it wrong. Throughout school until my senior year in high school, I went by a nickname I hated (it was given to me by a principal in elementary school) because people found it easier to say than my real name.
That said, though I'm white, mispronunciation of names is often clearly racist, because my colleagues in school often fretted and complained about African-American names but somehow got weird white ones, Chinese ones, and even Somalian names correct. Getting people's names correct is basic and apparently very hard, and the Key & Peele substitute teacher sketch is too true.
Data point: The name my students most consistently misspelled, however, was "John." They generally (no matter what their background) spelled it "Jhon."
*It is also a personal offense to many that I don't have my husband's last name, and that I'm thus neither Ms. nor Mrs. but, if you insist on calling me something, "Dr."
posted by Peach at 11:04 AM on December 23, 2022 [8 favorites]
That said, though I'm white, mispronunciation of names is often clearly racist, because my colleagues in school often fretted and complained about African-American names but somehow got weird white ones, Chinese ones, and even Somalian names correct. Getting people's names correct is basic and apparently very hard, and the Key & Peele substitute teacher sketch is too true.
Data point: The name my students most consistently misspelled, however, was "John." They generally (no matter what their background) spelled it "Jhon."
*It is also a personal offense to many that I don't have my husband's last name, and that I'm thus neither Ms. nor Mrs. but, if you insist on calling me something, "Dr."
posted by Peach at 11:04 AM on December 23, 2022 [8 favorites]
Dern. Missed the edit window. That should be "neither Miss nor Mrs."
posted by Peach at 11:12 AM on December 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Peach at 11:12 AM on December 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
haha I too have an unusual (and also kinda funny) last name. its English for fricks sake, and sounds just like it looks, yet people get really hung up about it. also its possible to mispronounce in a way that is very mockable and naughty. oh fun. it took me a long time to come to embrace my uncommon name, but I have. I am highly googleable though, since my first name is also not super common.
I have always tried to be sensitive too the pronunciation of people's names. its not that hard.
posted by supermedusa at 11:20 AM on December 23, 2022
I have always tried to be sensitive too the pronunciation of people's names. its not that hard.
posted by supermedusa at 11:20 AM on December 23, 2022
The one that gets me is where they misspell my given name in email replies to me
this happens to me ALL.THE.TIME. my first name is the less common spelling variant of a more common woman's name. allthetime!
posted by supermedusa at 11:23 AM on December 23, 2022
this happens to me ALL.THE.TIME. my first name is the less common spelling variant of a more common woman's name. allthetime!
posted by supermedusa at 11:23 AM on December 23, 2022
People from the Midwest seem to be more likely to get my name right. I don't know whether it's a better tradition of courtesy, or there are fewer Jews there so what they hear isn't overlaid with what they expect to hear.
Possibly familiarity with Germanic or Slavic (Polish etc.) names? I have a longish, phonetically unsurprising but uncommon Eastern European Jewish name and most people I encounter who comment or have some joke about it are recognizing familiar patterns from that region/language family - without necessarily placing the Jewish part even though even though everyone with my actual name is because it’s not one of the really stereotypical ones - usually because they have some family connection.
posted by atoxyl at 11:24 AM on December 23, 2022
Possibly familiarity with Germanic or Slavic (Polish etc.) names? I have a longish, phonetically unsurprising but uncommon Eastern European Jewish name and most people I encounter who comment or have some joke about it are recognizing familiar patterns from that region/language family - without necessarily placing the Jewish part even though even though everyone with my actual name is because it’s not one of the really stereotypical ones - usually because they have some family connection.
posted by atoxyl at 11:24 AM on December 23, 2022
Whoops posted that too early by accident and then messed it up even more in editing but I think it’s readable enough.
posted by atoxyl at 11:30 AM on December 23, 2022
posted by atoxyl at 11:30 AM on December 23, 2022
I have a friend with the last name Salmond who would occasionally get asked for the pronunciation and respond with "like salmon, but with a d". This seemed like the only logical option to him until someone eventually said "oh I thought it was like almond, with an s", whereupon he had a slight mind expansion. I love this story and in our house he is referred to as [firstname] Salmon-Almond.
(salmon => sam, almond => all where I live)
I'm the proud owner of a medium-length German name which is a guaranteed "huh?" from anybody in the English speaking world, so I often use my mother's bog-standard English maiden name as a Starbucks name.
posted by arxeef at 11:32 AM on December 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
(salmon => sam, almond => all where I live)
I'm the proud owner of a medium-length German name which is a guaranteed "huh?" from anybody in the English speaking world, so I often use my mother's bog-standard English maiden name as a Starbucks name.
posted by arxeef at 11:32 AM on December 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
Like anshuman, I am the only person in the world with my name (hyphenated maiden and married name). It's kind of cool but given that my first name* already has A LOT of variations, putting both my first name and full last name together gets interesting. Especially when I say "hyphen." That really throws people.
*Candace. Believe it or not, the most common misspelling of my name is not Candice or Kandice or Kandace. It's Candance. Like 90% of the time. IDK.
posted by cooker girl at 11:46 AM on December 23, 2022 [4 favorites]
*Candace. Believe it or not, the most common misspelling of my name is not Candice or Kandice or Kandace. It's Candance. Like 90% of the time. IDK.
posted by cooker girl at 11:46 AM on December 23, 2022 [4 favorites]
This is a tangent, and I admit it, but it's fun and seasonal and at least PARTLY relevant:
My mother used to teach preschool, and as such she would get Christmas presents from the kids each year. She'd save a bunch to unwrap on Christmas morning as part of the family unwrapping.
My mother was not one of the head teachers, and this was in the days before Internet so parents weren't always able to look up the teachers' names at this preschool; they either had to rely on maybe one or two flyers where my mother's name might possibly have been listed, or had to ask their kids what Mom's name was. And since these kids were three or four, "Wadsworth" was sometimes a bit of a mouthful for them...and so, we got used to a lot of really creative mis-spellings of our name, from parents hazarding a guess at what their kid was saying and then writing that on the gift tag. Far and away the family favorite was the gift with a tag neatly made out to "Mrs. Rosmer".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:08 PM on December 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
My mother used to teach preschool, and as such she would get Christmas presents from the kids each year. She'd save a bunch to unwrap on Christmas morning as part of the family unwrapping.
My mother was not one of the head teachers, and this was in the days before Internet so parents weren't always able to look up the teachers' names at this preschool; they either had to rely on maybe one or two flyers where my mother's name might possibly have been listed, or had to ask their kids what Mom's name was. And since these kids were three or four, "Wadsworth" was sometimes a bit of a mouthful for them...and so, we got used to a lot of really creative mis-spellings of our name, from parents hazarding a guess at what their kid was saying and then writing that on the gift tag. Far and away the family favorite was the gift with a tag neatly made out to "Mrs. Rosmer".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:08 PM on December 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
I have an extremely common first name and somewhat uncommon last name, and as a result I am almost always referred to by last name even by very close friends, so there is no ambiguity about who is being referred to. I'm perfectly fine with this -- it is my name -- but I do find the dynamic interesting. It helps that the last name is (people tell me) fun to say.
posted by jscalzi at 12:15 PM on December 23, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by jscalzi at 12:15 PM on December 23, 2022 [7 favorites]
I was once responsible for assigning usernames to people in a small organization. We had a bog-standard first initial, last name scheme. We occasionally made exceptions if there was a compelling reason to.
Our new facilities guy had a very simple last name. Two syllables, utterly phonetic for English speakers. I swear if I showed that name to any of you, given that you all know enough English to be reading this thread, you'd pronounce it correctly the first time. But! It ended with a vowel. It was Japanese.
His boss (this wasn't his idea, I checked) asked me to make an exception for him, because she thought that "people might have trouble with his name."
Of course I refused, but the punch line? Her name, though English, was four syllables with an "ough" in it.
posted by tangerine at 12:21 PM on December 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
Our new facilities guy had a very simple last name. Two syllables, utterly phonetic for English speakers. I swear if I showed that name to any of you, given that you all know enough English to be reading this thread, you'd pronounce it correctly the first time. But! It ended with a vowel. It was Japanese.
His boss (this wasn't his idea, I checked) asked me to make an exception for him, because she thought that "people might have trouble with his name."
Of course I refused, but the punch line? Her name, though English, was four syllables with an "ough" in it.
posted by tangerine at 12:21 PM on December 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
I have an extremely common first name and somewhat uncommon last name, and as a result I am almost always referred to by last name even by very close friends, so there is no ambiguity about who is being referred to.
In my grade in junior high school there were so many kids named Jason that we called them all by their last names. But two of them have very similar last names as well (spelled differently but pronounced the same) so they were just called by unflattering nicknames. I still usually call the one I'm closest to by his last name but the two that had the nicknames are now Jason if I'm speaking to them and their nicknames if I'm speaking about them to another friend.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:25 PM on December 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
In my grade in junior high school there were so many kids named Jason that we called them all by their last names. But two of them have very similar last names as well (spelled differently but pronounced the same) so they were just called by unflattering nicknames. I still usually call the one I'm closest to by his last name but the two that had the nicknames are now Jason if I'm speaking to them and their nicknames if I'm speaking about them to another friend.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:25 PM on December 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
I was born in Poland. My first name is a pretty generic Euro name which has multiple variants and spellings internationally, and my surname is a short gendered adjective, and contains a diacritical mark. I'm very fussy about my name and surname being spelled correctly. The diacritical mark is not in the legal documents issued by my second country, and I can't be bothered to find out now if it can be put in, so I don't care that much if it's omitted. I absolutely will not use the masculine version of my surname (something immigrants have often done when anglicizing their names) -- my parents sometimes signed me up for stuff using that surname when I was a child, and I painstakingly corrected all those records as an adult, because that's not my name.
I am, however, extremely unfussy about pronunciation. As long as you get all the letters in there in vaguely the correct order, we're good. In fact I actively encourage people to use the intuitive phonetic pronunciation that they would expect in their home language, because I dislike hearing my name spoken like a loanword. I would find it extremely weird if English-speaking people started using the Polish pronunciation. I consider the different pronunciations to be what my name is in different languages.
Going in the opposite direction, I always have to ask how people with anglicized Polish names would like them to be pronounced, because the only thing I can be sure of is that it's definitely not going to be what I would expect!
posted by confluency at 12:35 PM on December 23, 2022 [4 favorites]
I am, however, extremely unfussy about pronunciation. As long as you get all the letters in there in vaguely the correct order, we're good. In fact I actively encourage people to use the intuitive phonetic pronunciation that they would expect in their home language, because I dislike hearing my name spoken like a loanword. I would find it extremely weird if English-speaking people started using the Polish pronunciation. I consider the different pronunciations to be what my name is in different languages.
Going in the opposite direction, I always have to ask how people with anglicized Polish names would like them to be pronounced, because the only thing I can be sure of is that it's definitely not going to be what I would expect!
posted by confluency at 12:35 PM on December 23, 2022 [4 favorites]
If there's one thing that bugs me about otherwise decent podcasters, it's when they run up to a foreign name or word with "Okay, I know I'm pronouncing this wrong ... [name? Variant of name?] I'm so sorry, I hope that's right ..." Slightly better than making outright fun of it, but not much. Learn the damn thing ahead of time! Or at least practice it enough that if you have it wrong, you sound like you're saying a real word and not like you're deciphering an alien script!
I have an ordinary last name with a thousand spellings; my own is one of the less common. It's got no marginalizing effect, but I do understand what it's like to struggle with databases and phone calls.
posted by Countess Elena at 12:47 PM on December 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
I have an ordinary last name with a thousand spellings; my own is one of the less common. It's got no marginalizing effect, but I do understand what it's like to struggle with databases and phone calls.
posted by Countess Elena at 12:47 PM on December 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
I have always tried to be sensitive too the pronunciation of people's names. its not that hard.
Or the spelling. And you never know when there could be a Thing about that, or why. (Like the guy I used to work with who was from Northern Ireland and preferred to spell his name the Gaelic way, even though his legal documents said otherwise.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:56 PM on December 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
Or the spelling. And you never know when there could be a Thing about that, or why. (Like the guy I used to work with who was from Northern Ireland and preferred to spell his name the Gaelic way, even though his legal documents said otherwise.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:56 PM on December 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
I have a difficult-to-spell European surname, which frequently confuses people when they try to either spell or pronounce it. Oddly enough, they tend to add letters and syllables, when really a couple of the letters are silent.
What makes it worse is that the spelling of my name is apparently now unfashionable in its country of origin, so that almost everyone who still lives there now spells it differently…
posted by learning from frequent failure at 12:59 PM on December 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
What makes it worse is that the spelling of my name is apparently now unfashionable in its country of origin, so that almost everyone who still lives there now spells it differently…
posted by learning from frequent failure at 12:59 PM on December 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
I have an less then common English first name, an uncommon Italian surname for a middle name, and an Ellis Island fabricated last name that we think must have just been a hasty phonetic spelling of a run of the mill Russian surname. There are around 40 people with this last name, and we are all definitely related. I am absolutely the only person to ever have my full name and it sucks. I am totally my first name, no complaints there, but in this internet era my name may as well be my social security number. If you Google my full name every hit is me and only me. I guess it's not that big a deal, but what was a quirky good time growing up in the 80's is now just bad infosec.
posted by Stonestock Relentless at 1:37 PM on December 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by Stonestock Relentless at 1:37 PM on December 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
Are there any counter-examples where the English name turns out to be something off-color or rude in another language (ex. Belgium acc. to Douglas Adams, who may have been pulling our leg).
Uh, yes. My (ex-husband's) surname. French speakers and cinephiles definitely blanch at it. It's a completely innocuous place name in Finland.
posted by humbug at 1:50 PM on December 23, 2022
Uh, yes. My (ex-husband's) surname. French speakers and cinephiles definitely blanch at it. It's a completely innocuous place name in Finland.
posted by humbug at 1:50 PM on December 23, 2022
The worst misspelling of a name I ever committed was my cousin Cathy's wedding gift. I've known her since she was born. I grew up seeing her birth announcement in our family album. "Cathy," short for "Catherine." I'd written it on her birthday cards for decades, and seen it on the back of the school picture her parents sent every year.
When she got married, I didn't see the invitation because I was living with family and the whole household was included. It was a fall wedding, so I thought a fancy, engraved, gold "Our First Christmas" ornament would be a nice gift. I called Cathy's parents to make sure I had the spelling of her fiancé's name correct. I had it sent ahead so it would be one less thing for them to tote home from the reception. And then I get to the wedding, where everything is personalized, "Jason and Kathi." (I don't feel so bad because she ignored her entire family at the wedding and didn't order enough vegetarian meals for those who RSVP'd.)
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:23 PM on December 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
When she got married, I didn't see the invitation because I was living with family and the whole household was included. It was a fall wedding, so I thought a fancy, engraved, gold "Our First Christmas" ornament would be a nice gift. I called Cathy's parents to make sure I had the spelling of her fiancé's name correct. I had it sent ahead so it would be one less thing for them to tote home from the reception. And then I get to the wedding, where everything is personalized, "Jason and Kathi." (I don't feel so bad because she ignored her entire family at the wedding and didn't order enough vegetarian meals for those who RSVP'd.)
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:23 PM on December 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
That's amazing Underpants Monster, was her family spelling her name wrong on the school picture? Did she decide her name was too generic and alter the spelling? I have only questions.
My Aunt spelled my cousin's middle name wrong on the birth certificate (using a family name from the father's side) and decades later she has to look it up every time she needs to fill out a government form.
posted by Dynex at 3:23 PM on December 23, 2022
My Aunt spelled my cousin's middle name wrong on the birth certificate (using a family name from the father's side) and decades later she has to look it up every time she needs to fill out a government form.
posted by Dynex at 3:23 PM on December 23, 2022
That's amazing Underpants Monster, was her family spelling her name wrong on the school picture? Did she decide her name was too generic and alter the spelling? I have only questions.
I assume the latter. It was no doubt spelled the new way on the invitation, which I should have asked to see.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 3:31 PM on December 23, 2022
I assume the latter. It was no doubt spelled the new way on the invitation, which I should have asked to see.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 3:31 PM on December 23, 2022
Not sure I care if this makes me identifiable, but my surname is Anglicized from Cantonese as 'She.' (Pronounced s'eh - but that probably doesn't help you) At least it makes me more difficult to google.
Fun times in elementary school. Jokes on them, I was transfemme all along. I ended up adopting the pronunciation as "Shea" (like the stadium), but returned to s'eh in college and stuck with it.
My Cantonese given name is also a female name - albeit as a tribute to a common-ish female name, as I was named after a peri-stillborn older sister.
Head of Regulatory (based in the UK, Englishwoman by birth and upbringing, at first I thought she was cool but she ended up being a piece of work) recently misspelled my English (well, super-common Anglicized Irish male) given name (it wasn't a keyboard typo) as it was the super-uncommon variant of the super-common spelling. It's spelled right there in the email address and in my sig!
Had a friend in college, multigeneration mutt from the midwest with the French surname of Molyneaux. His family had been pronouncing it Molnux for generations.
posted by porpoise at 3:32 PM on December 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
Fun times in elementary school. Jokes on them, I was transfemme all along. I ended up adopting the pronunciation as "Shea" (like the stadium), but returned to s'eh in college and stuck with it.
My Cantonese given name is also a female name - albeit as a tribute to a common-ish female name, as I was named after a peri-stillborn older sister.
Head of Regulatory (based in the UK, Englishwoman by birth and upbringing, at first I thought she was cool but she ended up being a piece of work) recently misspelled my English (well, super-common Anglicized Irish male) given name (it wasn't a keyboard typo) as it was the super-uncommon variant of the super-common spelling. It's spelled right there in the email address and in my sig!
Had a friend in college, multigeneration mutt from the midwest with the French surname of Molyneaux. His family had been pronouncing it Molnux for generations.
posted by porpoise at 3:32 PM on December 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
I work in pediatrics in a fairly diverse area, so I encounter names from a wide variety of cultures as well as a lot of novel names or spellings. Besides trying to, you know, do my job well, one of my big missions at work is to treat those names with respect and shame other providers when they don’t do the same. It’s okay to not know how to pronounce a name once, but once you’ve been told, say it right. You don’t get to just decide a child is going to have a nickname because you don’t like the name their parents chose or find it too difficult. Maybe you think it’s silly, but it’s not your kid, it’s not your choice. There’s so much classism and racism in how people respond to names, and it’s often really overt in people I would otherwise consider pretty cognizant of their privilege.
posted by obfuscation at 3:32 PM on December 23, 2022 [12 favorites]
posted by obfuscation at 3:32 PM on December 23, 2022 [12 favorites]
A common Indian name is Bhat, sometimes spelled Butt. One of my students had that last name, but his family legally changed it a couple of years later.
I admit I cannot pronounce my coach’s Serbian first name name entirely correctly, because the second vowel and the concluding “s” do things I cannot quite manage with my mouth, but I work hard at it.
posted by Peach at 5:24 PM on December 23, 2022
I admit I cannot pronounce my coach’s Serbian first name name entirely correctly, because the second vowel and the concluding “s” do things I cannot quite manage with my mouth, but I work hard at it.
posted by Peach at 5:24 PM on December 23, 2022
My given name is a one only, and my name which I go by, which is minus the first name, is also the only one anywhere. I am currently hiding under a rock. Happy Holidays.
posted by Oyéah at 6:25 PM on December 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Oyéah at 6:25 PM on December 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
As someone with a distinct name (even in its location of origin), my SEO potential is off the charts.
I regret anglicizing my name in previous years as I don't like how it sounds, but have adopted short-term nicknames and abbreviations that I have enjoyed since.
Great article! Thanks for linking it.
posted by mesh_drifting at 6:36 PM on December 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
I regret anglicizing my name in previous years as I don't like how it sounds, but have adopted short-term nicknames and abbreviations that I have enjoyed since.
Great article! Thanks for linking it.
posted by mesh_drifting at 6:36 PM on December 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
One of my totally normal hobbies is collecting unphonetic English names: Featherstonhaugh, Cholmondeley, St John, Beauchamp, Chisholm, Colquhoun, Leicester & Worcester
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 6:51 PM on December 23, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 6:51 PM on December 23, 2022 [6 favorites]
I am still pissed off on behalf of my Irish friend who told me what one of her college professors did to her name. Her first name is "Cliona" - it's not SUPER common, and is more of a "traditional Gaelic" name, but it's not THAT uncommon. But one of her college professors was an English dude who insisted that he "couldn't handle" her name and insisted on rearranging the letters so he could call her "Nicola" instead.
(Go bhfaighir bás gan an sagart, you snooty enitled wanker)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:54 PM on December 23, 2022 [5 favorites]
(Go bhfaighir bás gan an sagart, you snooty enitled wanker)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:54 PM on December 23, 2022 [5 favorites]
Our new facilities guy had a very simple last name. Two syllables, utterly phonetic for English speakers. I swear if I showed that name to any of you, given that you all know enough English to be reading this thread, you'd pronounce it correctly the first time. But! It ended with a vowel. It was Japanese.
His boss (this wasn't his idea, I checked) asked me to make an exception for him, because she thought that "people might have trouble with his name."
My last name is Japanese, four letters, two syllables, nothing phonetically weird for English speakers. I've been at my current job for fifteen years and I have coworkers who still misspell it. If I'm talking to someone on the phone, I might spell my last name twice and still have people misspell it.
I once worked with a guy named Alec [Russian last name], and at some point I learned that his real name was Oleg and Alec was his public-facing name for work because people couldn't pronounce/remember "Oleg". It seemed absolutely fucking ridiculous that people who could manage "Alec" couldn't manage "Oleg", but I understand why he does that.
I absolutely love being able to order and schedule things online so I'm the one who gets to input my name, spelled correctly. I can only imagine how much time in my life I've wasted repeating and correcting it in person and on the phone.
posted by creepygirl at 7:57 PM on December 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
His boss (this wasn't his idea, I checked) asked me to make an exception for him, because she thought that "people might have trouble with his name."
My last name is Japanese, four letters, two syllables, nothing phonetically weird for English speakers. I've been at my current job for fifteen years and I have coworkers who still misspell it. If I'm talking to someone on the phone, I might spell my last name twice and still have people misspell it.
I once worked with a guy named Alec [Russian last name], and at some point I learned that his real name was Oleg and Alec was his public-facing name for work because people couldn't pronounce/remember "Oleg". It seemed absolutely fucking ridiculous that people who could manage "Alec" couldn't manage "Oleg", but I understand why he does that.
I absolutely love being able to order and schedule things online so I'm the one who gets to input my name, spelled correctly. I can only imagine how much time in my life I've wasted repeating and correcting it in person and on the phone.
posted by creepygirl at 7:57 PM on December 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
My parents decided to spell my name atypically so that English speakers would read it correctly phonetically. It's only been somewhat successful, but it does mean that it's much more uncommon than the traditional spelling, so I can usually get my name as my username.
For the first time in my career, I'm working with someone on a project whose name is said the same as mine. Now I know what all of the Daves and Dans feel like :)
posted by aneel at 8:50 PM on December 23, 2022
For the first time in my career, I'm working with someone on a project whose name is said the same as mine. Now I know what all of the Daves and Dans feel like :)
posted by aneel at 8:50 PM on December 23, 2022
My first love had a stutter particularly on hard consonants. Gary’s Starbucks name was “Sam.”
I’m just “Wendy like the hamburgers, Beck like the beer.” Simple andstupid memorable.
posted by bendy at 10:16 PM on December 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
I’m just “Wendy like the hamburgers, Beck like the beer.” Simple and
posted by bendy at 10:16 PM on December 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
"Michael" is one of the top five most common men's names in my country, and I still frequently run into people who don't know how to spell it.
posted by straight at 1:07 AM on December 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by straight at 1:07 AM on December 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
Sometimes at Starbuck's I'll say, "My name is Victoria Winters," but I've never met a fellow Dark Shadows fan that way yet.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 1:30 AM on December 24, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by The Underpants Monster at 1:30 AM on December 24, 2022 [6 favorites]
I'm a 55 french-canadian who doesn't speak french and I am pretty sure I have never really properly pronounced my own last name.
posted by srboisvert at 3:43 AM on December 24, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by srboisvert at 3:43 AM on December 24, 2022 [6 favorites]
I am Cajun, but had a 'normal' name. But watching people try to pronounce or spell my children's names - one Cajun, one Welsh, and one Greek - is an eye-opening experience. They are all 7 & 8 years old and just give the speller side-eye and recite their names in a singsong cadence. One of my sons has already decided to go with his 'normal' first name.
posted by gwydapllew at 5:48 AM on December 24, 2022
posted by gwydapllew at 5:48 AM on December 24, 2022
Mr. gudrun's first name is Stephen, pronounced just like Steven (Stephen is actually the more traditional spelling of the name). You would not believe the number of people who either pronounce it as Stefan, or persist in spelling it as Steven, despite knowing or working with him for years.
A work friend with the Vietnamese first name of Ducphong has gone by a nickname since school days because there is just no hope of people getting her name right.
An inlaw from Argentina is named Claudio - pronounced Cloud-ee-o, not Clawed-ee-o. He goes by his middle name of Paul at work because people will persist in mispronouncing his first name.
My first, middle, and last names are just unusual enough to get butchered regularly, including my stereotypically English surname (I mean - it is a place name in England and Canada, and the name of a character in a somewhat well known play/movie, but people in the U.S. seem totally mystified by it). I refuse to shorten my three syllable first name, but I do have a percentage of Mr. gudrun's family members who don't pronounce it correctly. For some reason they all mess up the vowel in the second syllable the same annoying way (sigh).
All my life, I have tried to put extra effort in getting as close as I can to pronouncing people's names the way they want me to. It is just common courtesy. You better believe I call Claudio by his first name, pronounced correctly.
posted by gudrun at 7:37 AM on December 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
A work friend with the Vietnamese first name of Ducphong has gone by a nickname since school days because there is just no hope of people getting her name right.
An inlaw from Argentina is named Claudio - pronounced Cloud-ee-o, not Clawed-ee-o. He goes by his middle name of Paul at work because people will persist in mispronouncing his first name.
My first, middle, and last names are just unusual enough to get butchered regularly, including my stereotypically English surname (I mean - it is a place name in England and Canada, and the name of a character in a somewhat well known play/movie, but people in the U.S. seem totally mystified by it). I refuse to shorten my three syllable first name, but I do have a percentage of Mr. gudrun's family members who don't pronounce it correctly. For some reason they all mess up the vowel in the second syllable the same annoying way (sigh).
All my life, I have tried to put extra effort in getting as close as I can to pronouncing people's names the way they want me to. It is just common courtesy. You better believe I call Claudio by his first name, pronounced correctly.
posted by gudrun at 7:37 AM on December 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
At this point in my life I'm very much on the opposite end of the spectrum from finding it annoying to correct pronunciation of my name. My name is originally a Dutch name, similar to a slightly uncommon English name, but spelled with an extra letter through an accident of my parents'. As a kid in the US, my name was regularly mispronounced in a variety of ways, which was sometimes irritating, but since then I've lived and worked in Japan, where it was literally impossible to pronounce my name "correctly" in Japanese, and now I'm living in the Netherlands, where the "correct" pronunciation in Dutch of my name is very different from how I grew up pronouncing it in English. At this point, there hasn't been any point to me making people try to pronounce it how it "should" be in English in over a decade, and I honestly find it more annoying when Dutch people ask me over and over whether I prefer to have my name pronounced the English or Dutch way. I do not care! I respond to both and they both "feel" like me!
That is not to say that anyone else's experience is wrong, and my experience is heavily colored by my name and appearance affording me relative degrees of appearance in all of the situations my name has ever been (mis)pronounced. At least for me, it's a complete non-issue, but I can certainly imagine that in situations where other micro- and macroagressions are tied to one's name, it can be very taxing.
posted by wakannai at 7:43 AM on December 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
That is not to say that anyone else's experience is wrong, and my experience is heavily colored by my name and appearance affording me relative degrees of appearance in all of the situations my name has ever been (mis)pronounced. At least for me, it's a complete non-issue, but I can certainly imagine that in situations where other micro- and macroagressions are tied to one's name, it can be very taxing.
posted by wakannai at 7:43 AM on December 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
For the first time in my career, I'm working with someone on a project whose name is said the same as mine. Now I know what all of the Daves and Dans feel like :)
I've got the extreme of this - the diminutive of my first name (which I usually prefer using) rhymes with the diminutive forms of two common male names. So if I'm somewhere in a somewhat crowded and slightly noisy space and someone calls my (common) first name, or either one of those (common) guy's names, I always have a second of "hey, is someone calling me?....."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:35 AM on December 24, 2022
I've got the extreme of this - the diminutive of my first name (which I usually prefer using) rhymes with the diminutive forms of two common male names. So if I'm somewhere in a somewhat crowded and slightly noisy space and someone calls my (common) first name, or either one of those (common) guy's names, I always have a second of "hey, is someone calling me?....."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:35 AM on December 24, 2022
My name is a unique pronunciation of a common spelling of a pretty common US name. I do not answer to the wrong pronunciation from someone I know. I typically give people three or so chances to get it wrong before I start being annoyed. It’s important for me to be called the right name. That said, I do have a sliding scale of how much effort I go into correcting people.
If I’m never going to see someone again I will pronounce my name correctly but if they get it wrong I don't bother correcting it. Starbucks mobile order is great because I add a comical amount of letters to make it phonetically correct. Still, they often “correct” my name to the common pronunciation when saying it (really, those 5 “e’s” don’t look like a long e to you!?). I spell my name differently depending on the medium and use. If I’m typing it I spell it correctly, when handwriting it I add a long e symbol, and since I wear a nametag at work I add extra letters to make it look phonetically correct. This system makes sense to me but I realize it must confuse some coworkers because some type it with a bunch of random letters made up of 4 different pronunciations of my name. It makes me laugh. As long as they say it correctly I don’t mind.
I was supposed to be named Amy but, as my mom just reminded me yesterday, she thought I was unique and needed a unique name to match. My name is really important to me, and really made me feel different (in a good way) my entire life. It also makes me try a little harder to learn others’ names. The ones I find the hardest are names (like mine) that are spelled the same but pronounced differently. For example, Sonia as “sOHn-ya” vs “sAHn-ya” or Tara as “Tare-ah” vs “Tahr-ah.”
posted by Bunglegirl at 11:18 AM on December 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
If I’m never going to see someone again I will pronounce my name correctly but if they get it wrong I don't bother correcting it. Starbucks mobile order is great because I add a comical amount of letters to make it phonetically correct. Still, they often “correct” my name to the common pronunciation when saying it (really, those 5 “e’s” don’t look like a long e to you!?). I spell my name differently depending on the medium and use. If I’m typing it I spell it correctly, when handwriting it I add a long e symbol, and since I wear a nametag at work I add extra letters to make it look phonetically correct. This system makes sense to me but I realize it must confuse some coworkers because some type it with a bunch of random letters made up of 4 different pronunciations of my name. It makes me laugh. As long as they say it correctly I don’t mind.
I was supposed to be named Amy but, as my mom just reminded me yesterday, she thought I was unique and needed a unique name to match. My name is really important to me, and really made me feel different (in a good way) my entire life. It also makes me try a little harder to learn others’ names. The ones I find the hardest are names (like mine) that are spelled the same but pronounced differently. For example, Sonia as “sOHn-ya” vs “sAHn-ya” or Tara as “Tare-ah” vs “Tahr-ah.”
posted by Bunglegirl at 11:18 AM on December 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
Mr. gudrun's first name is Stephen, pronounced just like Steven (Stephen is actually the more traditional spelling of the name). You would not believe the number of people who either pronounce it as Stefan
that one may only get worse
posted by atoxyl at 11:19 AM on December 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
that one may only get worse
posted by atoxyl at 11:19 AM on December 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
Mr. gudrun's first name is Stephen, pronounced just like Steven (Stephen is actually the more traditional spelling of the name). You would not believe the number of people who either pronounce it as Stefan
I like to tell people my name is Stephen with a ph and then explaining that it is important that my name be pronounced "Stephen" rather than "Steven" and absolutely insisting that there is an audible difference that I can hear and repeating Stephen and Steven over and over to try and get people to hear the non-existent difference. It's good fun. For me at least.
posted by srboisvert at 11:40 AM on December 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
I like to tell people my name is Stephen with a ph and then explaining that it is important that my name be pronounced "Stephen" rather than "Steven" and absolutely insisting that there is an audible difference that I can hear and repeating Stephen and Steven over and over to try and get people to hear the non-existent difference. It's good fun. For me at least.
posted by srboisvert at 11:40 AM on December 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
"Constantly correcting people on the pronunciation of your name is psychologically taxing,"
Ugh. Tell me all about it. Lifelong issue with the pronunciation of my name. (A small but important difference between how native speakers pronounce it, and how the rest of the world does. Which, for some reason, my parents decided to add to my task of growing up in regional 1960s Australia.)
Let's just say that mainstream Australia doesn't do diacriticals. It confuses and scares them.
Almost every day of my life this comes up. Seems a small thing in isolation, and it mostly is. But also not really. It never gets easier to deal with, the relentless drip-drip-drip of it adds up, and it hurts.
Identity matters. Words matter. We name things for very good reasons. Make the effort to know and correctly use the names of people in your life. All of them. Persistently mispronouncing a person's name is lazy and disrespectful at best, a deliberate dehumanisation at worst, and either way will not earn you any favours.
To new parents I say: Weird names and odd spellings and tricky pronunciations are not cool. They don't make you and your babies more special. If you insist on doing it then at least give the kid a relatively tame middle name they can opt for later, and don't hold it against them if they do.
posted by Pouteria at 8:20 PM on December 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
Ugh. Tell me all about it. Lifelong issue with the pronunciation of my name. (A small but important difference between how native speakers pronounce it, and how the rest of the world does. Which, for some reason, my parents decided to add to my task of growing up in regional 1960s Australia.)
Let's just say that mainstream Australia doesn't do diacriticals. It confuses and scares them.
Almost every day of my life this comes up. Seems a small thing in isolation, and it mostly is. But also not really. It never gets easier to deal with, the relentless drip-drip-drip of it adds up, and it hurts.
Identity matters. Words matter. We name things for very good reasons. Make the effort to know and correctly use the names of people in your life. All of them. Persistently mispronouncing a person's name is lazy and disrespectful at best, a deliberate dehumanisation at worst, and either way will not earn you any favours.
To new parents I say: Weird names and odd spellings and tricky pronunciations are not cool. They don't make you and your babies more special. If you insist on doing it then at least give the kid a relatively tame middle name they can opt for later, and don't hold it against them if they do.
posted by Pouteria at 8:20 PM on December 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
Hah, that last bit fits a former coworker of mine who had a super long, super complicated unintuitively spelled and pronounced first name and then the middle name was given for that reason. I note she went by her first initial. I did secretly write down how to pronounce the full name anyway.
I came across a name change where the person took common words and then kr8tivly and super unintuitively spelled them. I thought, I don't get why you deliberately changed to something you will always have to spell out, that will perennially get mangled. That would drive me nuts.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:09 PM on December 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
I came across a name change where the person took common words and then kr8tivly and super unintuitively spelled them. I thought, I don't get why you deliberately changed to something you will always have to spell out, that will perennially get mangled. That would drive me nuts.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:09 PM on December 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
My husband and kids have a super-common, completely phonetic English last name where all letters are pronounced and none are doubled. They share this name with an early American president, a state capitol, and place names all over the English-speaking world.
I cannot tell you how many native-English-speaking, American-born Americans are 100% completely baffled as to how to spell it, and act like they have never heard the word before in their lives.
It did make me feel a little better about having spent 40-odd years patiently spelling out my very unusual, non-phonetic, not-intuitive to pronounce last name.
When we got married, I started giving his last name when I made restaurant reservations over the phone, things like that, thinking, "aha! At last I have a Starbucks name!" Reader, it was a bust. And I rapidly went back to my much more difficult last name, because I know all of its fail states, so it's much easier for me to help someone look it up in their computer, because I know how it was likely to have been misheard or misspelled.
By the way, pro tip, if you Google a name and the word "pronunciation," a YouTube video will usually pop up that is just people saying the name very slowly and clearly. Sometimes adding country of origin, if you know it, we'll get you an even better pronunciation. This has sent my correct-first-attempt percentage way way up when attempting non-English first names. (And people are often pleased and surprised when you are relatively close on the first try.)
I love asking people about their names, why their parents chose it, or why they chose it for themselves. Because almost everyone is named something that their parents thought (or they thought) was beautiful, or important. It's really nice to hear all the people choosing names that they found beautiful. (I mean I don't spring it on people the first time I meet them, I'm not a weirdo, but I do love to hear those stories it comes up later on.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 4:30 AM on December 25, 2022 [3 favorites]
I cannot tell you how many native-English-speaking, American-born Americans are 100% completely baffled as to how to spell it, and act like they have never heard the word before in their lives.
It did make me feel a little better about having spent 40-odd years patiently spelling out my very unusual, non-phonetic, not-intuitive to pronounce last name.
When we got married, I started giving his last name when I made restaurant reservations over the phone, things like that, thinking, "aha! At last I have a Starbucks name!" Reader, it was a bust. And I rapidly went back to my much more difficult last name, because I know all of its fail states, so it's much easier for me to help someone look it up in their computer, because I know how it was likely to have been misheard or misspelled.
By the way, pro tip, if you Google a name and the word "pronunciation," a YouTube video will usually pop up that is just people saying the name very slowly and clearly. Sometimes adding country of origin, if you know it, we'll get you an even better pronunciation. This has sent my correct-first-attempt percentage way way up when attempting non-English first names. (And people are often pleased and surprised when you are relatively close on the first try.)
I love asking people about their names, why their parents chose it, or why they chose it for themselves. Because almost everyone is named something that their parents thought (or they thought) was beautiful, or important. It's really nice to hear all the people choosing names that they found beautiful. (I mean I don't spring it on people the first time I meet them, I'm not a weirdo, but I do love to hear those stories it comes up later on.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 4:30 AM on December 25, 2022 [3 favorites]
Because of my Celtic mispronunciation name, I wanted to take my wife's simpler surname when we wed. She said no.
Subsequently, we started getting junk mail for her with Fs in it. There are no Fs in her name, no consonant clusters that could get confused for Fs, and I have subsequently decided that Americans will find a way to mispronounce Bob if they just don't care enough.
All can be equal before the underpaid, burned-out typists in customer service, from Borb Smit, to Chanandler Bong, to Panda Lakshmi.
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 11:07 AM on December 25, 2022 [3 favorites]
Subsequently, we started getting junk mail for her with Fs in it. There are no Fs in her name, no consonant clusters that could get confused for Fs, and I have subsequently decided that Americans will find a way to mispronounce Bob if they just don't care enough.
All can be equal before the underpaid, burned-out typists in customer service, from Borb Smit, to Chanandler Bong, to Panda Lakshmi.
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 11:07 AM on December 25, 2022 [3 favorites]
I can only imagine the confusion felt by Thai people who have names that are perfectly acceptable in their native language, but are a nightmare in English
I knew someone in high school who had a name that was essentially pronounced "Fuck You"... I can't remember how the Anglicized version was written or spelled but I think the first name was Phouc, but I'm probably butchering that.
Anyway, he lived for first days of class or substitute teachers stumbling over how to pronounce it just so he could reply with "Fuck You!" and watch them either lose their shit or get all kinds of flustered, like "Pardon me!?" "That's how you say my name!" and just reveling in the chaos that always ensued.
posted by loquacious at 12:24 PM on December 25, 2022 [3 favorites]
I knew someone in high school who had a name that was essentially pronounced "Fuck You"... I can't remember how the Anglicized version was written or spelled but I think the first name was Phouc, but I'm probably butchering that.
Anyway, he lived for first days of class or substitute teachers stumbling over how to pronounce it just so he could reply with "Fuck You!" and watch them either lose their shit or get all kinds of flustered, like "Pardon me!?" "That's how you say my name!" and just reveling in the chaos that always ensued.
posted by loquacious at 12:24 PM on December 25, 2022 [3 favorites]
If there's one thing that bugs me about otherwise decent podcasters, it's when they run up to a foreign name or word with "Okay, I know I'm pronouncing this wrong ...
The recently concluded Futility Closet podcast always made a point (after the first few episodes, anyway) of saying to potential listener mail correspondents that pronunciation tips for their names was welcome, as the hosts did not want to mangle anyone’s name.
They belatedly realized that this was not necessarily a solution because of differing pronunciations of letters even in shared languages: specifically it was pointed out that the hosts, being American, had rhotic accents (that is, where a final ‘r’ is voiced) and many listeners writing from most areas of the UK or Australia have non-rhotic accents — consider how Lynda Carter and Helena Bonham Carter would pronounce their shared surname in their own respective accents.*
The hosts soon realized this extended beyond merely the ‘r’ sounds — the cities of Melbourne in Florida, USA and Melbourne in Victoria, Australia are spelled identically and have entirely different vowel sounds for locals. An American and an Australian with the same name could have hugely different pronunciations.
*Not long after I listened to the episode where the Futility Closet folks were grappling with this, I heard a BBC program where one of the guests was comedian Lucy Porter. Her surname in my rhotic Canadian accent has every letter voiced but in her own non-rhotic (Croydon) one, this is not the case. Better still, the same show also had comedian Dane Baptiste on it, and he referred to Porter by name at one point. He is from south-east London, and as well as being non-rhotic his own accent turns the medial ‘t’ in her name to a glottal stop, meaning from my view, he is eliding half the letters in her name.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 5:27 AM on December 26, 2022
The recently concluded Futility Closet podcast always made a point (after the first few episodes, anyway) of saying to potential listener mail correspondents that pronunciation tips for their names was welcome, as the hosts did not want to mangle anyone’s name.
They belatedly realized that this was not necessarily a solution because of differing pronunciations of letters even in shared languages: specifically it was pointed out that the hosts, being American, had rhotic accents (that is, where a final ‘r’ is voiced) and many listeners writing from most areas of the UK or Australia have non-rhotic accents — consider how Lynda Carter and Helena Bonham Carter would pronounce their shared surname in their own respective accents.*
The hosts soon realized this extended beyond merely the ‘r’ sounds — the cities of Melbourne in Florida, USA and Melbourne in Victoria, Australia are spelled identically and have entirely different vowel sounds for locals. An American and an Australian with the same name could have hugely different pronunciations.
*Not long after I listened to the episode where the Futility Closet folks were grappling with this, I heard a BBC program where one of the guests was comedian Lucy Porter. Her surname in my rhotic Canadian accent has every letter voiced but in her own non-rhotic (Croydon) one, this is not the case. Better still, the same show also had comedian Dane Baptiste on it, and he referred to Porter by name at one point. He is from south-east London, and as well as being non-rhotic his own accent turns the medial ‘t’ in her name to a glottal stop, meaning from my view, he is eliding half the letters in her name.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 5:27 AM on December 26, 2022
Because almost everyone is named something that their parents thought (or they thought) was beautiful, or important.
I and the other members of The Society of Younger Siblings Whose Names Were Chosen Solely to Coordinate with Older Siblings' Names thank you for the "almost."
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:27 AM on December 26, 2022 [2 favorites]
I and the other members of The Society of Younger Siblings Whose Names Were Chosen Solely to Coordinate with Older Siblings' Names thank you for the "almost."
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:27 AM on December 26, 2022 [2 favorites]
« Older Film Is Not Dead | The heroic age of the tech giants is over Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by infini at 6:36 AM on December 23, 2022 [7 favorites]