Wow. I’m freaking. This thread was old 4 months ago and then BAM!. Here it is again.
Everything is alright though. As of February 30th I changed my name to Haywood Jablowme.
My last name is Sees. Very uncommon so I don’t mind telling people that it’s S-E-E-S, not S-E-A-S or S-E-I-Z-E or whatever. Of course it still comes in the mail as Seas. Or Seese. Or Cees. whatever.
But these are the ones that make me want to smack them:
Idiot: “Oh, like the candy.”
Me: “No, my name is Sees. The candy is See’s.”
Idiot: “That’s what I said.”
Me: “No, what I mean is, that name is See. My name is Sees.”
Idiot: “Right, like the candy!”
Me: “No, it’s not. If I owned a candy company it would be Sees’s.”
Idiot, getting exasperated with me: “That’s what I’m saying! See’s!”
I never did get this idea across to an idiot typist who I used to work with. She was there about a year and never did understand that I did not spell my name Lorinada See’s. God, how I wanted to smack that idiot bitch!
One day when I was already in a foul mood, I got in the above exchange with a bank clerk. The stupid bitch even had the nerve to say “I grew up on See’s candy, I know how to say it!” I’m normally very patient, if not exasperated, with this sort of arrogant stupidity, but this day before I even realize it I shot back with “That still doesn’t mean you’re not too stupid to understand possessives!” I couldn’t believe I had said that but I somehow felt better for it.
Hey, I went to high school with someone named Sees.
Do you know a Steve Sees. Graduated in 1979?
Another thing about last names: Don’t you just hate how some people think you know everyone who has the same last name as you?
(I’m not kidding about graduating with a Steve Sees though).
No, from what I can gather this name is more common in the northeast (where my dad was from) and I’m in the southwest.
BOUMAN
BOUMAN
Sorry - I had a point about my last name, but somehow it got sent (twice) rather than continued.
As I was going to say …
My last name is pronounced BOUGH-man, as in, “when the BOUGH breaks.” Ninety-nine times out of 100, it gets mispronounced either “BOO-man” or “BOE-man,” as in “bow and arrow.” It frustrates me to no end and is the reason I never make restaurant reservations.
My mother and half-brother share the last name Hitsman - pronounced HEIGHTS-man, as in “I am afraid of heights.” Again, whenever someone is trying to read it, they prounouce it just as it is spelled - including my mother’s own boyfriend, who lives with her!
I guess in both cases, it hsa a lot to do with the surnames being somewhat country-specific. (Dutch and German. I believe.) How I wish my father had used his mother’s maiden name, so I could be a Hayward - easy to pronounce.
-Dirty
In Gerald Durrell’s books, Chumley is a chimpanzee 
My pet hate is people adulterating my last name.
It’s Frazer, a Scottish surname owned by a first-generation Australian (yes, it’s also spelled with a Z, my other pet hate is people who spell it with an S).
This is pronounced FRAY-zer.
Not Fray-see-er. Or Fray-sher. That is, it is not pronounced or spelled the same as the name Frasier- it has no I, and is not pronouced as though there is an H (as in the TV show about the seattle psychiatrist). It is not even Fray-ser… definately Z not S.
This used to only by a problem when I went to north american countries (spending about 15 minutes on the phone trying to get the hotel desk clerk to understand that I was, in fact, the guy in room 134… “but you didn’t say your name was Frasier… we have that room down for Frasier” :smack:), but it’s starting to be a problem down here in the Antipodies too (although with an Australian accent it usually sounds closer to FRAY-zuh when pronounced correctly :rolleyes:).
Damn that pervasive american sitcom culture!
Um, Lisa or Shayna or Jill or whatever, I think you need to look into the possibility of a dissociative personality disorder.
Seriously.
Why didn’t I notice this thread sooner?
My last name is “Frey.” It’s pronounced “Fry,” as in, “to fry some fish.” Regardless, people who see my name (teachers and telemarketers) pronounce it “fray” almost every time. People who hear it spell it “Frye” or “Fry” or whatever.
The only advantage, if nobody else has tried this, is that it serves as a GREAT screen for telemarketers. 99% of telemarketers pronounce my name incorrectly (“Is Mr. Fray home?”, which instantly signals to me that it’s somebody I don’t want to talk to. CLICK!
As someone with a unmispronouncible name may I say: I had no idea!
I usually do pretty good with people’s names. At least I think so after reading the thread.
It was a couple of pages ago but I have to add:
Featherstonehaugh: also pronounced feeson-hay
As far as I can figure the English population, in a rare feat of empathetic statemanship, refused to pronounce their consonants in the wake of Eastern Europe’s vowels being carted off by the Mongols. Just a WAG on my part of course…
My last name is Baluck, pronounced Bahl-LUCK. To me, it doesn’t look like it could possible be that much of a challenge. Bay-LUCK I can understand, that makes sense. I’ve gotten Ball-lick and Bowl-lick from people trying to be witty, (often this degenerates into getting called Ball-sack and Ball-suck), and from telemarketers, we’ve gotten such highlights as Boullallick and Bubulick.
And of course, it’s forever being misspelled. Usually double L’s, especially by the pizza place that’s right across the street from my grandmother, from whence we have ordered pizza on a several times a month basis since the thing opened in 1945. THEY HAVE NEVER SPELLED OUR NAME CORRECTLY. It’s always Balluck, Ballock, or, last night’s, Balick. Augh.
We had a conversation about getting your last name mispronounced in French class a while ago. I go to school with Mudshark, and everybody thought the idea of reading about the Ball-lick/Semen-sack wedding in the newspaper was terribly amusing.
My name is spelled “Lukas” but people always spell it with a c [Lucas]. I feel so alone in the world… and it’s annoying having to spell out my name for everyone.
I have a double name – in other words I go by both my first and middle names together (i.e., Mary Elizabeth). I resent when people think it is okay for them to shorten my name despite however many times I correct them. I especially hate it when they tell me it isn’t a big deal. I’ll tell them that it is just as rude as calling someone named Justin, John. I’m proud of my name and just hate it when someone massacres it (or even worse calls me by a diminuitive of my first name).
I think it is nice when someone goes by both their names. (First and middle together) And I can’t believe they would try to continue to shorten your name, even after you requested several times that they not. shakes head
I’ve heard it that way once, Tanya Tucker. She says “it’s ‘Tan-ya,’ like TAN-ya Hide”.
What you need to do is hyphenate them. It looks terribly French, which is a plus. I would never dream of calling my friend Patrick-André anything but Patrick-André (he signs emails P.-A.; and yes, Patrick-André is his birth name.)
I started with a new temp company in January. They misspelled my name on my first paycheck (which happens with every new job). I corrected them. Flash forward to two weeks ago. A new person is handling payroll. She told me she corrected the spelling on my name. I told her it had already been corrected back in January. She told me “well, it just didn’t look right to me, so I changed it.”
Heh. People.
The woman who cuts my son’s hair is named Kathy. My name is Cathy. You’d think I’d be able to remember her name. But I don’t. Twice now, I’ve thought her name was Dianne. That’s my sister’s name. I have been completely convinced that her name was Dianne, even though her name is the same as mine, although with a different spelling. I guess I keep thinking that she has the same name as someone close to me, rather than my name.
The really weird thing is that she says it happens to her all the time. People always think her name is Dianne. It’s really bizarre.
I have been told that my name isn’t really Cathy. Cathy must, apparently, always be short for something, like Cathleen or Catherine. But it isn’t. It’s Cathy. Get over it.
I am slightly related to a man who signed the Declaration of Independance, and have the same name. The historical figure’s name is always pronounced, by historians and others (who presumably should know) one way, but it came down through the family a couple of hundred years later pronounced another way.
Did the name mutate over time, or are the historians just making a bad assumption?