There are Joffes and Jaffes? This madness must stop!
(Thanks for the clarification! I couldn’t understand why Ina Jaffe-Walt wasn’t coming up in Google.)
I have often wonder if it is mandatory when applying for a job at NPR for spell check to reject your name or you can’t get a job. No wonder that they let John Edwards go. He couldn’t pass the name test. Could Juan Williams be far behind?
I knew there was another one that always baffled me…Saraya Sigh Harry Nelson. Or as it’s actually spelled, Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson.
Scanning the list has taken all the mystery and romance out of listening to NPR…now I actually have spellings in my head. Who knew it was “John Ydstie?”
I like Daljit Dhaliwal, who started off with the BBC and Channel 4 in the UK and is now working in the US. I like saying her name, however inexpertly. It’s an unusual combination of <linguistic whatevers> for me.
I completely agree. I was not prepared to surrender my “Lacksh Mee Schwing” imaginings.
Actually, that’s one I knew how to spell! 
Never had you pegged as a Coheed and Cambria fan.
Ar? 
I thought I made it up.
Then there’s Mark O’Warman.
Coincidentally, yesterday’s letters segment from NPR’s Talk of the Nation mentioned how many listeners liked her reports and especially her signoff, and they played a clip of her doing just that. 
How should it be pronounced? She’s of Puerto Rican and Trinidadian ancestry, so I have no clue how it should be said…
Yeah…I would say that, technically, it’s not possible to mis-pronounce one’s own name.
BTW, at least some of the staff at NPR have noticed the existence of the create your own NPR name game.
“And even though Sylvia Poggioli exclaims ‘mama mia!’ whenever she hears us say it, this is NPR: National Public Radio.”
Seems perfectly normal French-based orthography to me. The French spell “ou” the demivowel that sounds like “w” to us.
Oh lord, I can’t! It would be worse than my porn name!