Sorry everyone. I’m the guy who gets your name wrong and doesn’t know how to pronounce it (go ahead and tell it to me 10 more times, I may get it right, but don’t count on it) or spell it (failed at spelling all six years of elementary school).
So send me an email and I’ll cut and paste, otherwise take your chances on the phone. And if I’m on my cell, then don’t bother.
Oh, it doesn’t matter how common (first name, very common for my age group) or unusual (like my last name), spelling it out to Japanese over the phone is an exercise in frustration for both parties.
I mean this in the nicest possible way, but yes. It is beyond ridiculous to discount the general run of ability (or lack thereof) on basis of an anecdote from you when you have an aptitude and an interest that is, as you say, exceptional.
My maiden name was unusual and I had to spell it out a lot and I was quite frustrated by it. I swore when I married, I’d be sure my husband was called Smith or Johnson.
But noooo… my married name is unusual and I have to spell it out. But I’m older and mellower so it doesn’t bug me much.
My first name is Jeremy, a fairly common name, with only one minor variant I’ve seen (Jeremey), but unless I spell it, I often get Jermey, in particular, and then the occasional WTF? spelling.
My last name is a compound word made of two short,slightly uncommon English words, depending on whether or not you’re a gamer, I suppose. Uncommon, yes, but in every single way unambiguous. But people just assume it’s foreign, I guess; pronunciation is 80%+ of the time with the emphaSIS on the second syllable rather than the first, which also changes the vowel sound the second syllable possesses. So, I live with spellings that drop half of the double-letter in the middle, interchangeable “e”, “a”, and “u”, and the ever-varied “d” or “t” at the end. The whole thing’s only 7 letters, but looking at junk mail addressed to “me” is a hoot.
Not quite as fun as getting a package to “Farts McGehee” (which, unfortunately, I have to spell every time also, but it’s way more fun), who is my online shopping alter-ego, since that’s the name on my debit card. Long story that’d be a hijack to get into here.
No, I agreed with you. I didn’t mean that rhetorically or ironically. I’m a freak and I know it. I appreciate your nicest possible way of saying things.
But my name isn’t freaky. It’s as staid and normal a name as any, and ought to be easy to spell. If only they hadn’t given up on teaching phonics…
Hell, like I said I above, Polish was my first language, and, while I don’t make the same pronunciation errors Americans do when they try to speak Polish without previous experience in that language, it’s quite obvious that I speak with an accent and don’t reproduce all the sounds faithfully.
Some people have an incredible knack for languages even after their formative language-learning years, though. I have a friend who learned Hungarian as his second language when he was in his early 20s. He speaks, according to natives, exactly like a native. In fact, when encountering him, they think he is from Eastern Hungarian, as he has an Eastern Hungarian accent (which is where he picked up the language.) Meanwhile, my mom and dad, who both moved from Poland in their late teens or early 20s, and now have been in America for over 40 years, are unmistakably Polish in their accent. I grew up with a lot of off-the-boat Poles who came here in their early teens, and every single one of them, without exception, is identifiable as a non-native.
My last name is McClure, and it’s kind of mind-boggling how many people will decide to put a space in the middle of it. Apparently they’ve never seen a McDonald’s.
I automatically spell my last name since it isn’t incredibly common. That doesn’t bother me. What irks me is when someone reads my last name spelled out and then pronounces it as an entirely different word because they’re too lazy to try to sound it out (and it isn’t hard). It’s even worse when I’m talking to a sales rep or the like on the phone, start the conversation by TELLING them my name, and then spelling it for them, only to have them mispronounce it later in the call.
I actually compliment people who get it right – sadly, that doesn’t happen very often.
My real name is Jacob Brown. I think I have been asked once if Jacob is spelled with a k and twice if Brown had an e at the end. Other than that, nobody ever has had a problem spelling my name.
I know what you mean…my surname is Mistele (it’s no secret, as pulykamell notes), which is German-Swiss, but a lot of people assume it’s French (with a silent E at the end), which leads them to (incorrectly) guess that it’s pronounced mis-TELL, instead of MIS-tuh-lee.
My college roommate came up with a mnemonic for it: it’s an adverb – the rain falls mistily. Once I give that to people, most of them remember it.
For the record, I got WordMan’s name right the first time I met him. pulykamell’s, on the other hand, I still butchered a bit.
I got WordMan’s right, too. It somehow never occurred to me to think it was French, despite (or perhaps because) I took French all throughout high school. Yeah, with your name, I assumed it was Germanic, but had no clue how you’d personally pronounce it. I don’t even think I attempted it. Does it have a long “ee” sound at the end in the native pronunciation? I would have guessed some sort of schwa at the end, not a clear long vowel.
Oh, and I don’t recall you butchering my name, but I’m not particularly attached to any pronunciation, since it’s all fairly arbitrary in English. Life-long friends of mine regularly use all four common attempts at my last name: p@-WIN-skee, poe-WIN-skee, paw-WIN-skee, and p@-VIN-skee. I have a friend with the (relatively) common last name “Schweizer,” and I always hiccup on it, since I want to pronounce it somewhere halfway between the German and the English, with a an English “w” and a German “z,” so SHWEYE-tser instead of their family’s preferred “SHWEYE-zer.”
Well, that’s where it gets more interesting. From what I’ve learned, it looks like the original Swiss spelling is “Misteli”…the Zurich phone directory has quite a few with that spelling. Somewhere along the line, at least some of the family which emigrated to the States changed the spelling.
First name – there are two spellings in common usage, but even if there weren’t, I wouldn’t care.
Last name – yes, always expect to spell. Even speaking to francophones, because I have a slight American accent, they’ll ask, “Spelled like that? (meaning: can I spell it like you pronounced it?)” (in French the whole conversation), just to make sure. It can’t be pronounced in English, so of course I’m not upset at spelling it when speaking to an Ausländer. Just to be sure, though, in those cases, I use the IPA (not the linguistics one, the pilot’s one), including (especially) “‘X’ as in ‘X-Ray’.”
My first name is fairly common for a female, but can be spelled several different ways. People always want to throw an extra letter in my name, but it’s just the straightforward spelling. My last name is more often seen as a man’s first name, but it should be easy enough to spell. I have seen some creative butchering tho… :rolleyes:
Boyfriend’s last name is Cook… he always spells it for people and I wondered why until we came across this ditzy chick trying to find his pick-up order. “Cook… C-O-O-K” he says. She digs around through the bags… “I’m sorry sir, there’s no order here for Tuck!” :smack:
There are three legitimate ways to spell my last name, all pronounced the same: Osborne, Osbourne, Osborn, and I use probably the least common spelling of my first name (Rik). I used to correct the spellings, but nowadays I figure that, unless it’s for some “official” purpose (government documents, financial records, work-related stuff), I’ll just let it slide. In any case, my first name is “Richard” on anything official/important.
Though I do want to mock people who spell both names wrong when replying to my e-mail or posting a message on my Facebook page, where my correctly-spelled name is right there in their face.
My last name is also something that can be said as an insult so people always ask me to spell it. They also always try to pronounce it all weird so as not to say the actually word.
So if it was Loser, they’d say “Loser? can you spell that please” and then pronounce it like LouZAR.
