My mom’s husband’s name is Turkka. His brothers are Markku and Erikku. Turk says his parents stopped having kids because they couldn’t think of another name with a pair of "k"s in it. (To be clear; yes, he’s Finnish.)
Your name is Chiquita, isn’t it? And Mort Furd, your last name is Bloughmey, right? I’m great at these guessing games. 
Oh, BTW, featherlou is actually pronounced “Ekke Ekke Ekke Ptang Zoo Boing”.
With the exception of the country music person, I’ve never heard it pronounced the second way. (Actually, the first time I heard her name, I thought the DJ had mispronounced it)
Perhaps I’m in a weird part of America.
Anyway, when I was younger - I learned that people who heard my last name usually couldn’t spell it, and people who read my name usually couldn’t pronounce it (though this is changing, and not necessarily as true as it was then). So I got used to spelling my name when asked for it, rather than saying it and then having to spell it.
Also amazed how many people assume that I don’t know how to spell my own name, or that I must have defrauded the government into putting that spelling onto official documents. Because they’ll simply add a certain letter to the middle or change the last letter from an “e” to an “a.” (which is really odd, as it’s a silent “e,” it isn’t that they heard a schwa and thought it was an “a” there was nothing to hear, except buzzing around in their own minds) They’ll type it in wrong. They’ll copy it from my drivers license wrong.
Well, my last name is some Ellis Island bastardization of a Russian name (which we have no record of the original), and everyone seems to think that it’s pronounced one way or another, and tend to ignore my (polite) correction of the way it’s pronounced. I move up to Tallahassee for school, and all of a sudden, my name changes according to the people reading and electronically processing my forms. The “w” at the end all of a sudden becomes an “n” and I start religiously making it obvious that it’s a “w” every time I fill out anything. This doesn’t help at all, and people are still covinced that it needs an “L” in there too. All of a sudden I’ve become an Englishman! Even when I correct them in writing and verbally, it gets butchered… sometimes even worse than it was before. :eek: It seems like people are convinced that I can’t possibly have a “weird/unusual” last name up here. I never had this problem in South Florida. Crazy Mayberry hell.
You know, I can’t really top most of this stuff. My name’s just not that weird.
I will say that my first name is a bit unusual, and few people get it right on the first try, but please: When I was in high school, I was sitting in class, and a girl came from the office to get me for some reason (No, I don’t remember)…and she actually switched the last two letters of my first name. Which, incidentally, turned it into a familiar woman’s name. Oh, yes. Everyone had SUCH fun with that one. My girlfriend at the time just loved it.
But I showed her, sure enough. I married her! And now she’s known as Mrs. (Funny first name) (Not so funny last name)!
I have a fairly rare surname that sounds like a common one, except mine has an ‘a’ where the common one has an ‘e’. Many people seem to ignore that difference and pronounce my name the way they think is more “normal” 
I think genealogists say that over time there is a tendacy for rarer surnames to be treated as variants of some common name, and they get absorbed by them…like “Smythe, Schmidt, Smitte, Smithee” and so on tend to become “Smith” over time. Its frustrating holding out against that.
Hey, and your user name is pkbites! I just noticed that, after reading two pages of this thread.
My mom has a cousin named Deirdre. Her mother read it in a book, and though it looked elegant. It is pronounced completely unlike the name the Deirdre, because no one in the family had even heard it spoken (apparently, or perhaps they had heard it spoken, but didn’t relate it to the printed “Deirdre”). I figured it out for myself when I was about 12, and asked my mom about. I was told that we don’t mention it.
Another Finn here, and going from Riitijoki to Reed only served up a different set of spelling problems. So when I give my last name, I always spell it. About half the time, I have to repeat myself. But at least people don’t tell me I’m doing it wrong - that’s just plain rude. Criminy.
One nice thing about Finn names is that they can serve you well for security passwords (my mother’s maiden name is pretty unusual, even for Finns).
I try very hard to get the spelling/pronunciation right. But it still took me about a year to consistently get my friend Tadhgh’s name spelled correctly. I’ve never heard anyone pronounce it right unless they knew him.
Johnny L.A.: Suggest Jukka-Pekka. 
We do like our Ks.
uh, yeah. I wasn’t real original when I came up with my user name, was I.
The real monkey wrench into all this would be if I told you what the K stood for. (But I’d like to maintain some privacy in my personal life, so I’m not going to tell you.)
Kevin? Keith? Kenneth? Kerry? Kelly? Keisha?
Is it pronounced like the British do it? : Deer - Dree ?
Is there anyone named Mulva?
I have a Scottish surname that’s only one letter off from a common Irish surname. I live in Ireland. You can guess what happens.
I also have a problem (as in, I don’t know what to do) with certain English words that are pronounced differently in Ireland. Examples: Dorset Street - is pronounced dor-SET in Dublin, but DOR-set in England. Since my imperialist ancestors named it after the actual Dorset, I have problems pronouncing it the Irish way, though I concur that it was their fault, and when in Rome…
However, we also have the Gallagher brothers out of Oasis. They are of Irish heritage, but they are from England. They pronounce their name Gall-a-GER, but Irish people tend to pronounce it Gall-a-HER. How should their name be pronounced?
Then there’s the Thames river. It’s pronounced TEMS in England, but many Irish people, conscious of avoiding a “dis dat dese and dose” dialectical inflection, overcompensate and pronounce it THEMS (also THIGH-land). This happens on a regular basis, even with newsreaders.
My name is Luurtsema. I have to spell it out slowwwwly…L- U-U…
Then I get, LEU? LER? No, L -U-U…2 U’s
10 days later the letter comes in the mail addressed to and of the following.
Lertesemar
Leirtsma
LWtresma
:smack:
My first name is Raina - it was spelled that way so that people would know how to easily pronounce it and spell it. Huh. Well, the pronounciation generally does relatively well, simply because it’s so phonetic. I have had it spelled funky ways, like with an h like rhinoceros or something.
My last name, on the other hand, is polish. I haven’t had anybody try to correct me on how it’s supposed to be spelled (thankfully!) but I’ve just realized that there’s no way to get annoyed if they don’t pronounce it right to start off with. I respond to anything that remotely resembles my name. Makes it really easy to spot telemarketers.
It’s great too screwing people up with caller id. I like with my boyfriend and he has a 13 letter greek last name, which is what comes up on the id. People answer the phone saying christo-what??
I used to have to go through the whole double L thing when I was a kid. Everyone automatically assumed it was one. All the girls I knew with my name spelled it Alison. I couldn’t find anything with two L’s on it then. Now it seems to have taken a complete turn and everyone uses Allison. I for one always thought that one L looked weird but only because I was used to my own spelling. When I was about 8 though I desperately wished it was spelled Alyson. Thank god it wasn’t because I’d hate to go through the guaranteed hassle.
Thanking her father that he insisted it be spelled properly
If Catriona is pronounced “ka-TREE-na”, why isn’t “Fiona” pronounced “FEE-na”? Or is it?
I remain firmly coninved that Irish spelling system was created for the sole purpose of bewildering English speakers.
shi-VAHN.
NEE-ev.
My first name is Brendan. Not a particularly complex name and to the best of my knowledge traditionally spelled as shown, but I am amazed at how many people want to to spell it Brenden or Brendon. Or how many people try to pronounce it as if it were spelled Brandon.
Try my name on for size. It’s Devri. DEV-ree. Not Devry, Devree, Debbi, Devoree or any of the other million variations I’ve had thrown at me. Ok, I have a strange name and I know people aren’t going to get it on the first, maybe even the next few tries. Doesn’t bother me. What DOES bother me, a lot, is when someone asks me how I spell that, and I spell it for them, and they STILL get it wrong! How hard is it to take the letters as they are coming out of my mouth and put them correctly onto paper (or, more likely, onto the Starbucks cup of chai that I just ordered as I do EVERY DAMN MORNING). It’s D-E-V-R-I. :smack:
Since I also have a rather male sounding last name that could possibly also be seen as a man’s first name, I also often get “Oh, hello <Last Name> Devri!”
But there is an upside to this - it makes it easy to distinguish the people on the phone who know how to pronounce my name and put them in the proper order (and who I probably want to talk to) from the telemarketers who screw it up three ways from Sunday.
Luckily my parents decided when I was born that if they were gonna name their kid Antares, they better give her a nickname and just call her that. (If I had been male, I would have been Orion. That would have sucked.) So now whenever some tries to pronounce my name all I have to say is “It’s Ahn-TAH-rays, but everyone calls me Tara.” Come to think of it, my parents actually had an argument over whether the nickname should be pronounced “TERR-uh” (like terra firma) or “TAH-ruh” (like Scarlett’s house). Mom wanted Tah-ruh so it would match with Ahn-Tah-rays, but dad said Terr-uh was easier, so Tara it is. So I’m Tara to anyone who knows me who speaks to me, but all official documents say Antares. Also good for weeding out telemarketers.
My middle name presents a whole other set of problems, being “Janeva”. It’s my two great-grandmothers’ names together, Jane and Eva, but it’s pronounced “Juh-NEEV-uh”, like the convention. On my baptismal records, it’s spelled “Geneva,” (I like to think of this as proof that I really wasn’t meant to be a Christian.) and I think one of my uncles still believes it’s spelled that way.
So the culmination of all this was my highschool graduation. I was first to get my diploma, alphabetical order and all that, plus I was singing the national anthem beforehand. My principal asked me about three times before the ceremony how to pronounce my first name. I told him, three times, “Ahn-TAH-rays.” I figured he would get it by then. I also didn’t think he’d have a problem with my middle name, since it’s basically phonetic, most people get it fine. Wrong on both counts. What did I get? “An-TERR-ays Juh-NEH-vuh LastName” Dumbass.
[brief point of OP relevance]
But I’ve never had anyone argue with me about it… that must suck.
[/relevance]