I had a guy with a name like that in my unit. He had to get special nametags to fit all the letters in the alloted space. It was always entertaining to see a new NCO attempt to address him. They would stand there, staring at his nametag, while the gears in the language center of their brain made grinding noises.
We kidded him by telling people that his family was too poor to afford any vowels.
I can’t find it on the *Onion * Archives Search page, but during the Clinton administration, they ran an article in which the UN was airlifting vowels and dropping them into the Balkans, intending them for cities and people just like those referenced above.
“Throatwarbler-Mangrove”
[sub]22 posts, and y’all ignore te obvious joke? You people are slipping! :D[/sub]
Robin
Post #9.
Isn’t this GQ?
Nice to know I’m on your “ignore” list. 
<ducking and running>
I think you’re referring to a Dave Barry article on the Balkan Vowel Drop. I can’t seem to find a copy on line, but there are references to it. Google “Dave Barry Vowel Drop.”
Nope, I’m remembering an Onion article. Probably before they had an on line presence, as they say. I’ll keep looking. xo, C.
I was so busy thinking of the joke, I missed your post.
::throws herself on a sword::
Robin
Wojtyła 
I used to know, slightly, a guy whose last name was Przybyszewski. Pronounced “SHOO-ber-SHEV-skee.” Don’t know if that’s typical.
[hijack]
Our guy’s name is Charles Bronson!! 
[/hijack]
I remember the Onion one. Here’s a copy of it.
Beautiful! Thanks!
Yeah, that’s amusing to me, because I just can’t imagine committing some minor infraction in commerce and having Charles Bronson come after me! :eek:
Wow! Not to hijack but after 40 years I now know how to pronounce that word.
MAD lives!
I know someone who pronounce her surname Koch “Kah”. That seemed like a stretch.
We had an exchange student who pronounced it “zja-BEET-zki”–at least that’s what it sounded like to my earnest-but-thoroughly-American ears.
Hmm. You sure his name was Przybyszewski? Because I can’t see any way that name (pronounced approximately “pshih-bih-SHEF-ski” in Polish) becomes “zja-BEET-zki.” That name would be spelled something like “Zdziabitski” in Polish (going by your phonetic rendition), but there’s no such last name, to my knowledge.
At school, she was Ms. Shibbish.