I would rather people ask me how to say it than try to self-choke themselves (firstname) or turn my lastname’s “ch” (pronounced and written like in China or chocolate) into a /k/… but if someone directly said “I’m not going to try to learn your name”, that would be even more offensive. Saying “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to get that one right” and offering an alternative for my acceptance, ok; helping me come up with an alternative that won’t cause problems, I’m positively grateful. Complete refusal to try, not ok.
We had a pediatrician back in the '60s named “Srsic” (pronounced Sir-sick). I’m gonna take a stab and say “Hrncir” is pronounced Hern-sir. Close?
I kinda browsed through, but don’t think it’s been mentioned.
The Vietnamese name that sounds like “Win” as in what I thought might be something like:
Scotty Wynn for the poker player - nope:
Scotty Nguyen
Whenever those - I’m sorry how do your pronounce your name things happen - I am never sure when to give up. You don’t want to give up to quick - bit if the person really is ok with it - you don’t want to keep standing there wasting time.
Of course to me it almost always sounds like I’m repeating back what they are saying.
**Acsenray **has a point, though (no offense) I don’t think he’s being a great ambassador for it.
When there is a specific power disparity, any dismissive attitude toward the minority language is a problem. Respectful inquiry is never a problem for normal, polite people. When it’s just two different languages, it’s not a big deal. The Celtic and Native American languages have suffered greatly as English has expanded, and for that reason they are special cases, different from the case with Chinese and Czech. But no human could possibly learn all orthographic systems, and no reasonable person would expect them to.
As an ascendant world language, English speakers have the luxury of not having to be multilingual, and should maybe make a little extra effort on that account, and a bit more effort for languages their people have helped push out of existence, but it’s not like you have to abase yourself for honest mistakes.
I’ve never corrected someone who pronounced my name wrong so long as it was some reasonable rendering of the way it’s spelled in whatever accent or language they are comfortable with.
Yes, as I have said, it doesn’t bother me if people get the pronunciation wrong. That’s not a problem. There are many legitimate reasons why another person’s pronunciation might differ from mine:
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My pronunciation is an unusual or quirky pronunciation of what otherwise seems a common name. (Alicia Silverstone pronounces her name uh-LEE-SEE-uh instead if the common American pronunciation uh-LISH-ya)
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My pronunciation is a cultural variant that is uncommon or in the minority in my society or just different from that if the person I’m talking to. (My name is common throughout South Asia, but it’s pronounced slightly differently in Bengali and Hindi. I’m not going to try to force a Hindi-speaker to adopt a Bengali accent to say my name and I expect he or she will give me the same courtesy with respect to his or her name.)
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The other person has never encountered my name, perhaps just because it is rare in general or is not commonly found in Anglo-American society.
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The other person has an accent that will necessarily result in his pronunciation of my name varying from mine.
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My name uses phonemes that the other person cannot perceive or pronounce.
As a result of all these perfectly legitimate reasons, I am never offended if my name is pronounced wrong—or, to be more precise—pronounced differently from the way I pronounce it.
What I do find offensive are the following:
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An overly long conversation about my name when we are having a specific, goal-oriented, brief business- or customer-oriented encounter for which the exact pronunciation of my name is not particularly relevant.
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Especially: “I’m not even going to TRY saying your name” or similar sentiments. It’s not rude or insulting to get my name wrong. What’s rude and insulting us making me feel like a stranger in the country and society I was born in and have lived in all my life.
(My rule of thumb: I will pronounce my name approximately three times at the polite request of a new acquaintance.
After that I’m going to smile and say “Yes, that’s perfectly correct!” no matter what comes out of his or her mouth so long as the pronunciation generally reflects the letters in my name in order—I will correct transposed sounds—it’s ACsenray, not AScenray.
I won’t bring up the pronunciation of my name again unless we become good friends or it becomes clear that the other person has a sincere interest of some kind in culture, language, phonetics, or me personally.
Otherwise I’m fine with strangers, casual acquaintances, and professional colleagues pronouncing my name however way it’s natural to them. Not everyone has to be an expert.)
Lesser offenses—not rude or insulting, but I’m bored of these—
“That’s such a beautiful name!” — Gee thanks, um, Becky. That’s s beautiful name too.
“What does your name mean?”—Did you know that most names have a meaning? Do you know what “John” means? No, you’ve never asked when you met someone named “John”?
“To whom God is gracious.”
Doesn’t everybody know that? 
Bingo! Acsenray, it just didn’t (and doesn’t) make sense to me.
Do you mean she pronounces it uh-LEE-SEE-uh as oppose to uh-LEE-SHE-uh? Because I’m an American and I have never in my life heard anyone say the name as uh-LISH-ya.
And I’ve never heard anyone say it your way. So there you go. If you and I were both named Alicia, we’d be mispronouncing each other’s names with no good reason to ask in advance. And I for one wouldn’t correct you because it’s close enough.
Uh-LISH-(y)a is pretty common in my experience. I myself call her “Uh-lish-a Silverstone” (or possibly “Uh-LEE-shuh,” but three syllables either way. That’s my default pronunciation of “Alicia”–it also happens to be the first one at dictionary.com, and the pronunciation connected to the audio sample) and have to remind myself to say “uh-LEE-SEE-uh.”
OJ Simpson’s seldom heard first name was ‘Orenthal,’ which would seem to be pronounced like “OR-un-thahl,” but he actually pronounced with an extra unseen syllable, sounding like “uh-REN-thee-ul.”
Choir
Years ago at a former job in Florida, a coworker was leaving to move to Cincinnati. A card was being passed around, and another coworker started to write “Good luck in Cincinnati” when he got a quizzical look and asked me how to spell Cincinnati. I thought about it, and wasn’t sure myself. So I suggested that he start to spell it wrong, cross it out, then start to spell it wrong again, cross it out, and then write Ohio.
So thanks to me, he had the funniest entry on the going away card.
Get busy living, or get busy dying.
Five hundred yards… that’s the length of five football fields, just shy of half a mile.
Actually it’s just over a quarter-mile (440 yards). That line annoys me every time I hear it.
And much closer to the length of four football fields, not five.
The spelling of “8” always confused me.
EIGHT ?
Think of German acht and the Latin prefix octo-
ei…gh…t
a…ch…t
o…c…t-
In Early Modern English, GH made the same sound as German CH. It’s gone silent now, but it used to represent a single sound, which is what happened to /k/ before /t/ in Germanic.
Thanks for the explanation. Can you explain how Pádraig Ó Siochfhradha’s surname comes to be pronounced the way it does (“Shuhroo” is the closest I can come trying to say it myself)? I understand that the initial “sh” is from the “S” broadened by the following “i”, but the rest… what’s going on with the “chfh” cluster in the middle, and where did the “dh” at the end go?
Oh, Lord, I can try.
Siochfhradha consists of the following letters:
S + i + o + ch + fh + r + a + dh + a.
Fh is a special case, because the lenited form of F is silent. (Historically, it’s what happened to F in Hispanic Latin, too, which is why fumus, “smoke,” becomes humo, “smoke,” with no initial consonant. Both medieval Irish and Spanish probably had a phase where it was /h/ like English H, but it’s just silent now.)
So that leaves S + i + o + ch + r + a + dh + a.
Broad Dh is a /γ/ sound, a bit like the French uvular R. It’s actually the voiced form of Ch /x/, like German Bach or Scottish loch. By “voiced” I mean that whatever you do to turn K into G, do that to /x/ and it turns into /γ/. Between two broad unstressed vowels, though, Irish /aγa/ collapses to /u/ in many dialects.
So now we have S + i + o + /x/ + r + /u/
The s + i + o combination is the same as Siobhan: sho, or in IPA, /∫o/
So that’s /∫/ + o + /x/ + r + /u/.
In many dialects, /x/ is weakly articulated (not said with quite so much spit) in medial position, so it just becomes /h/.
Now it’s /∫/ + o + /h/ + r + /u/.
To recap:
Si = /∫/ Sh
o = o
ch = /h/ h
fh is there for historical, etymological reasons. Silent.
r = r
adha = u.