All relationships are about power. Power makes people feel good about themselves. Some of you will post here and try to explain that I’m wrong, that not all relationships are about power. GUESS WHAT? If you do that, then your attempt to educate is really a form of exerting power. All relationships boil down to being about power.
Why am I stating this fact of psychology? Because I’m God damn mother fucking sick of people trying to educate me on how to pronounce my own fucking name, that’s why!!!
When I make an appointment, cash a check, rent a car, etc., people see my last name and either prounce it “Beets” or “Bates”, or even “Bits”. It’s spelled Bietz, and it is pronounced BITES, as in “my dog bites trespassers”.
What pisses me off is, people then proceed to try to educate me about my own fucking name. “Oh. No, no, no. That’s pronounced BEETS” is what I usually get. Or, “My cousins girlfriends mothers uncle is from Germany and he would pronounce it BEETS”. I don’t give a rats ass if he pronounces it Beets, Bates, or Castanza! He’d be wrong! It’s BITES! I pronounce it BITES, every one of my relatives pronounces it BITES! There is a historical arguement in my family whether the original spelling was Beitz rather than Bietz. A few of my relatives actual go with the “e” before “I” spelling. Guess what?
THEY STILL PRONONCE IT “BITES”!!!
Quit trying to tell me I’ve been mis-pronouncing my own fucking name for 42 years!:mad:
I think my sister knows slightly how you feel, her name is Jenny, tis amazing how many people try to educated her that it’s short for Jennifer, she even pulled her ID on one schmuck and he didn’t budge.
As for the topic of people correcting how you say your own freaking name, they deserve to be hit upside the head repeatedly with a cluebat.
Luckily I’ve got a nice easy to pronounce name like Weaver myself. Of course my sister who is married now has to correct people on how to say Hartvigsen.
Look on the bright side it can help you screen calls. When my sister picks up the phone and hears a request for a Hartivigsen her telemarketer senses go off.
Just curious: if my last name were “Smith” and I chose to pronounce it “Jones” I’d be entirely correct to get pissed off at people who tried to tell me how “Smith” is supposed to be pronounced?
If my reductio ad absurdum is too much for you, how about someone named “Smith” who chooses to pronounce it “Smythe” or “Smeeth”? How pissed off does he get to be?
There was a kid in my class in High School who had the surname of Harradine. He pronounced it “harra-DYNE”. The rest of his family pronounced it as (I think) most people do: “HAR-ra-deen”.
I don’t know where he is now, but somewhere his wife and kids are now Harradynes, a whole new strain.
My maiden name is Doerr, pronounce door, like the front door. In 7th grade, I had a substitute teacher who, when calling role, pronounce it “derr”. When I corrected him, he said, “Oh, no, dear. This is Dutch isn’t it? Then it’s “derr”” Well, I said, "We’re American. That makes it “Door” He didn’t say another word about it!
How about taking a little responsibility here, folks? Try “I’ve got a name that’s a little tough to remember/pronounce/spell/etc.” or “I’ve got a name that legitimately is pronounced differently by other people with the same name, so of course strangers are going to be confused.”
I remember that the ballplayer Graig Nettles got all bent out of shape about the people who called him “Greg” or “Craig,” sometimes even AFTER he corrected them. Imagine that! He uses an oddball name, to be “different” or “unique”, and then the whole world refuses to instantly and universally acknowledgie his supreme uniqueness! How unjust! The poor fucktard!
I live life with a non-Anglo surname in a predominantly English country. The only ones I find who can pronounce it properly are those from India or the Pacific islands, oddly enough (it’s German-Swiss, from my mother’s husband – not my own father). I ignore the English, short pronunciation. Tends to give folk a bit of a shock, tho’, when they realise they’ve been doing it wrong.
I only really bother to correct misspelling of my full first name. And then, only for accuracy on official forms and whatnot.
There was a kid in my 7th grade english class with the last name of Raper. I always thought that was a horrible name and I ouldn’t understand why someone didn’t change it a long time ago.
Confusion is fine. Arguing with me about my very own name is not. (And not learning the name of someone who’s close to you after about a decade, as per some of the examples above, is just plain stupid.)
Have you ever heard of this wild, exotic language called French? Believe it or not, a lot of surnames you encounter in the US may be derived from French. Like, perhaps, Râpé.
My real full name is “Carol Anne.” That’s right, my last name (now) is “Anne.” I’m not “Carolyn.” Stop asking me my last name. Stop apologizing for not knowing my last name. Stop asking me three times if your package for what I got on ebay should be addressed to “Carol Anne who?.”
Yeah, I took five years of French. But Mr. Bucket didn’t do it because his name was French. His sister pronounced it normally as did his mother. He just thought that if he couldn’t see you, then you couldn’t see him.
