Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

This blog will pay for itself.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

People are complicated. Love is not.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

We still have time to mess this up!

The revolution will be supervised.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

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Respite Open Thread: Name Gaming

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245Comments

  1. 1.

    trollhattan

    At giant engineering firm 1, where the tussle among project managers for upcoming hours among the various disciplines took place at a Thursday meeting inappropriately nicknamed “the slave auction,” a person’s schedule was referred to as their “billability.” At giant engineering firm 2, instead of billability they used the term “soul time.” Or that’s what I thought for about a year until learning it was actually the far less cynical “sold time.” I expect anybody speaking to me about scheduling hours thought I had a speech impediment.

  2. 2.

    craigie

    Not quite in the same league, but all my life people have asked my name, I’ve said “Craig” and they have replied “hello Frank”

    Happens all the time. I’ve never understood it.

  4. 4.

    Ohio Mom

    Now I see what others have been complaining about this site loading and tweets in the post. All of a sudden, crash, crash crash. Could not open BJ at all.

    Got here finally by going to Cole’s Twitter and clicking on the link to this post.

    This is a good problem to have, it has an easy solution.

    All I will say about names is I used to have a maiden name no one spelled correctly and then I got married and changed it to another eternally misspelled name.

  6. 6.

    VOR

    My last name is a bit unusual, being a perversion of a Norwegian place name. If you have ever seen The Godfather Part II, same way the name Vito got the name Corleone in Immigration. The actual name is deceptively simple and is spelled exactly as it sounds, but people insist on a variety of mis-spellings and mis-pronunciations. Nobody ever spells or pronounces it correctly and I’ve gotten used to this fact.

  9. 9.

    Ken

    Reminds me of some friends who have kids named Sarah and Noah. On hearing in Sunday school about seraphim, one of them asked if there were noahphim.

    I think kids mis-hear or parse words in odd ways simply because they don’t have the vocabulary yet. As they learn more words, most people grow out of it. The rest become punsters.

  10. 10.

    Steeplejack

    Uh-oh, Popehat has been left on his own.

    Other things to explore while family is away:

    – What happens when we mix THIS liquor with THAT liquor?
    – Can we watch all the Star Wars movies in a row without sleeping?
    – Cat fight club: possible?
    – How much grilled meat before I can see time?
    – Could the microwave be faster?

    — StandWithUkraineHat (@Popehat) March 19, 2022

  11. 11.

    Geminid

    A couple months ago the thoughtful Magdi Semrau shared the origin of her Twtter handle. Her maiden name was Magdalene Jacobs, and her young elementary school students called her “Mangy Jay.”

  12. 12.

    brendancalling

    On the first day of Algebra in 9th grade, my best friend Tim (still my BFF BTW) was clowning around. Mr. Swistak didn’t know everyone’s name, and hurled an eraser, shouting “Stu” (short for “student”) “stop clowning!”

    To this day, even Tim’s parents call him “Stu.”

  14. 14.

    Alison Rose ???

    When I was a pre-teen, one of my older brothers had a friend named Anne-Marie, who I first “met” by answering the phone when she called. She always spoke very fast and also kind of mumbled (there may have been a little drug use) and the first couple times she called, I swore she said her name was Ivory.

    I’ve had my own name mistaken for other names, some of which–Alice and Alyssa–make sense based on sound. But the other day, a customer who I talked to on the phone and who needed to send me an email somehow turned it into Lauren when she wrote to me, even though I not only repeated my name but spelled it (since no one ever fucking spells it correctly). Her name was Melissa and I really wanted to respond to her with Shannon or something.

  15. 15.

    SFAW

    Interesting. My first name is not unusual, although not as popular as it was in the ’50s and ’60s, but based on what they call me, an unexpectedly large number of persons seem to hear it as either “Asshole” or “Dumbmotherfcuker.”

    I can’t explain it.

  16. 16.

    Math Guy

    This site misspells my email address: I type in ****.gmail.com but when I scroll to the end of the comments I see ****.myschool.edu. Not a big deal since I mostly “lurk” and rarely comment. Also, don’t confuse me with Mathguy.

  17. 17.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Two words: Lady Mondegreen. Several more words: ‘Scuse me while I kiss this guy.

  19. 19.

    opiejeanne

    @Alison Rose ???: My first name , Jeanne, is pronounced just like Jean or Gene, but people in recent years have been trying to make it Gee-Ann.

    I asked one idiot how many people had they ever met in their entire life whose name sounds like Gee-Ann, and he swore that he knew one whose name was spelled like mine.

    I also get Jeannie, Jeh-Nay, Joanne, and Jeanine, mostly from nurses since that’s who mostly sees my name written down these days. The last time I stood and said, “Try again.”

    Dammit.

  20. 20.

    SiubhanDuinne

    My name, Siubhan Duinne, is deceptive. It looks as though it should be pronounced just as it is spelt, but in fact is pronounced “Throatwarbler Mangrove.”

  21. 21.

    SFAW

    I’m taking a class at a local community college. My professor called my next-seat-over neighbor “Brian” for a number of weeks. Two weeks ago, when she called on “Brian,” he noted “actually, my name is Patrick.” [There is a Brian in class, but he and Patrick to do not resemble each other.] She apologized, didn’t understand why she thought he was Brian, but noted his correct name.

    Until this week, when she (unironically) called him “Brian” again.

  24. 24.

    JDM

    Way back when, my youngest brother insisted the Gigantor theme was “Gigantor the space age robot.  He’s at your cabbat.”

    We tried to tell him there was no such word, that it didn’t make sense, and the theme actually said “he’s at your command” but HE WOULD NOT BE SWAYED.

    Since he was 3 or 4 years old, I was proud of him for standing up to our authoriteh.

  26. 26.

    SFAW

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    “Throatwarbler Mangrove.”

    My dear, I hate to be the bearer of (pedantic) bad tidings, but in that sketch, it’s actually “Throatwobbler Mangrove.” For many years, I too pronounced it “Throatwarbler,” and then I saw the script (or whatever it’s called).

  28. 28.

    Another Scott

    @SiubhanDuinne: In a big math class in college, there was a guy with the last name of “Kaufman” who would get extremely upset when the prof pronounced it as it’s spelled.

    “No! It’s ‘Coughman’!!”

    Names are weird.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  29. 29.

    germy

    https://youtu.be/6TkvD9RW0mY?t=20

    One of my favorite short subjects: How To Figure Income Tax

    In a Monty Pythonesque moment, a live penguin waddled through the scene, without explanation and to the confusion of the narrator. It was cut as being too bizarre for an MGM production.

  30. 30.

    opiejeanne

    @Another Scott: Names are the property of the owner, so you pronounce them the way the owner wants it pronounced. I would have pronounced it the way it looks because I took German in HS and college, but not everyone did, and I have bumped into several people who insist on pronouncing it Coughman. Could be an attempt to sound less German because of two world wars

     

    ETA: I’m sure you already know all of this, sorry.

  31. 31.

    MomSense

    We still call my oldest son Sauce and my middle son Peeper because my youngest couldn’t pronounce Charles or Peter when he was little.

  34. 34.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @trollhattan: Longest stretch I ever worked for one company was at a technical consulting firm. “We” literally produced nothing but reports and analyses, and “we” prospered or failed on the strength of “our” expertise. “Time sold” (to paying customers) was the touchstone. I had one boss (ugly-to-the-bone sumbidge, Jabba The Hutt with greasy hair and glasses) who confronted one of his peons who had the temerity to charge a couple of hours in one two-week cycle to overhead: If you can’t find a contract to bill, I’ll look into laying you off!

    One of the ugliest practices (late in my stretch there, fortunately) was when competing for a contract: The Bosses instructed us peasants to bid 9-hour days, for which the firm would charge (and we would be paid) for 8. Effectively we were asked to work an hour a day uncompensated.

    Even uglier was what happened after winning a contract: When I was working at a remote site, I was told to bill every minute from the time I left the house to go to the airport to the time I walked back into my front door. Often I billed 13 or 14-hour days – which the firm happily scarfed up, paid me for 8 and applied the remainder to senior management bonuses. Two years later when I left that assignment I had no one to sell my time to, and was terrified I’d be laid off – I was actually shocked when my boss’s boss told me my “time sold” had been so outstanding they’d carry me on overhead for a month or two while they found me another contract to charge…

  37. 37.

    Math Guy

    Community names are sometimes mispronounced unless you are local: in Missouri there is a town named Milan. No, it is not pronounced that way.

  38. 38.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @SFAW:

    Yes, I knew some pedant was going to pop up with that, but what you fail to appreciate is that the ThroatWARBLER Mangroves and the ThroatWOBBLER Mangroves are different branches of the family, and have been estranged for years. We do not speak of the reasons for this. The great scandal occurred fully a decade before my birth.

  39. 39.

    Brachiator

    @SiubhanDuinne: 

    My name, Siubhan Duinne, is deceptive. It looks as though it should be pronounced just as it is spelt, but in fact is pronounced “Throatwarbler Mangrove.”

    I thought it was pronounced “Percy Dovetonsils.”

    (hat tip to Not Max and Ernie Kovacs)

  42. 42.

    MomSense

    @Another Scott:

    HA!  I actually won a Goethe prize for translation in high school – only because I had an East German defector ballet teacher who spoke only in German with me.

  43. 43.

    smith

    Then there are those of us whose names are so dirt-common we can use them as nyms online and still remain totally anonymous.

  44. 44.

    JoyceH

    @Math Guy: ​
     

    Community names are sometimes mispronounced unless you are local: in Missouri there is a town named Milan. No, it is not pronounced that way.

    Ditto Illinois. My Mom always talked about her aunt in Vy-Anna. One day I saw on a road sign that the name of the small town in Illinois where my Mom’s aunt lived was “Vienna”.

  45. 45.

    Yutsano

    Ugh. My first name IRL is pretty common. But my horrifically Québecois last name drives Americans nuts. Or more accurately, drives me nuts listening to Americans try to decipher it. And it’s only six letters long!

  49. 49.

    TheOtherHank

    My actual name is not Henry, but when I was an undergrad at UCSB I became friends with a group of people who called me Hank, because, “He looks like a Hank.”

    In that group of friends there was a guy named Steve. But from time to time people would talk about some crazy thing that Cliff had done. Cliff was never around and I was intrigued to finally meet him. Then one day someone relayed a story about Cliff that had occurred while I was present and no one named Cliff had been there, but Steve had actually been the perpetrator. I observed that, no, it was actually Steve who’d done whatever it was. Then I finally heard the story of Steve/Cliff. When he was a freshman (this was before I met these people), he had gotten excessively shit-faced and while standing at the edge of the cliff overlooking the ocean in Isla Vista (the apartment slum next to UCSB), passed out and fell off the cliff. He landed in the sand between two patches of rock at low tide. Someone in a nearby apartment thought he saw someone go off the cliff and went looking with a flashlight. He found him, and Steve woke up in the hospital with a broken leg. Steve was ever after know as Cliff Diver (Cliff for short).

  50. 50.

    Splitting Image

    @lollipopguild:

    Rufus T. Firefly would like a word with you, he wants to discuss the sanity clause with you.

    I’m pretty sure that sanity clauses are Otis B. Driftwood’s specialty. Rufus T. Firefly was an expert in taking up the tax (and the carpet).

    I’d better watch both movies to make sure.

  52. 52.

    CaseyL

    @Math Guy: Maine has a some city names that are pronounced…oddly.  “Calais?” Don’t give it the French pronunciation; they call it “Callas.”

  53. 53.

    Ruckus

    @SFAW:

    SFAW is rather difficult to pronounce, and likely can be stated in different ways. And as no one actually knows how to pronounce SFAW they use a words they can pronounce – asshole or dumbmotherfucker are two that most people can pronounce. Now for the first name on your drivers license, I have no idea…..

  55. 55.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @JoyceH: Along the same lines, there is a Versailles in Indiana pronounced “ver-sales”.

  58. 58.

    raven

    @raven:

    Although Powell’s government salary was never more than $30,000 a year, shoeboxes, briefcases and strongboxes with over $750,000 in cash were found in his hotel suite residence at the St. Nicholas Hotel in Springfield, Illinois within days of his death.[1][5] Another $50,000 was found in his office.[5] In his hotel room he also had 49 cases of whiskey, 14 transistor radios, and two cases of creamed corn.[6][circular reporting?] When settled in 1978 his estate was worth $4.6 million, of which $1 million was racetrack stock[6][circular reporting?] in seven Illinois racetracks.[5] A federal investigation determined that Powell had acquired much of his wealth through illegal cash bribes, which he received for giving noncompetitive state contracts to political associates. The State of Illinois received a $222,999 settlement from his estate; in addition, several state contractors were imprisoned for their roles in the affair.[5]

  62. 62.

    tom

    My last name is “Brandt”, which many telemarketers insist on pronouncing “Bran-dit”.

    “Is Mr. Bran-dit in?”

    “Nope, no one by that name lives here.”

  63. 63.

    sab

    @Yutsano: I had a normal last name that was so common that everyone could pronounce and remember it. Then I married a guy with a Swiss German last name with uniquely North American spelling.

    There are two correct ( in America) was to pronounce it. One way has an “f” in the middle and the other way has a “k” in the middle. Both are spelled with a “gh”. In Ohio you can tell what county people came from by which pronunciation they use. But everyone else ignores that weird “gh” . So the most common pronunciation of it is completely wrong.

    I spent my first ten years of married life correcting bank tellers, veterinarians, sales people etc. Now I just grin and bear it and getting excitedly enthusiastic on the rare occasions they get it right.

  65. 65.

    Raoul Paste

    My family‘s last name is close to that of a local restaurant.   People would call the house and just start right in with their carry-out order.
    More than once, I considered taking their order.  “ see you in 20 minutes…”

  68. 68.

    Ruckus

    @smith:

    I know 2 other men with my first/last name and middle initial, and if you leave off the II on the end I know of 5 others. One of the one’s without the II on the end my father met on a bus for a Shriner’s weekend excursion to Lost Wages. Fella sat down and introduced himself first name only. Then added the last name when dad said “Same here.” They had the same middle initial as well.

    The family lived about 4 miles from us, son named after father. The other I met in the navy, I was the master at arms of a transit barracks while waiting for ships orders and this fella walks in and checked in. When he told me his name I said Yes? We had a good laugh out of this.

    In case you hadn’t realized it my names are rather common……

    You aren’t anonymous, you just get confused the other 4 million people in a 100 mile radius with the same name…..

  70. 70.

    japa21

    It’s not just names that get mispronounced.  For example, in Wisconsin, they pronounce water fountain as bubbler.

  74. 74.

    japa21

    @Ruckus: ​
      I also have been blessed with a very common name. So common that in 2nd grade there were three of us with the same first and last name. The teacher would employ our middle initials (all of which were different).

  75. 75.

    sab

    @Ruckus: My sister has the same name as a famous actress, so if you google sis the actress is all that turns up. Since sis is actually a quite famous frog in her own small pond this sort of irks her. Then she remarried and added on her new married last name to her original name, and presto, Google works for her.

  77. 77.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @Steeplejack: Apparently, great midwestern state people pronounce alike :-).

    Not a mispronunciation, but on the topic of kids not understanding names, I vividly remember when I was in (I think) 7th grade and realized that this “LA” that adults spoke of was the same city as Los Angeles. Wow! Who knew?

  78. 78.

    Kalakal

    It’s Fronkensteen!

    I’m so used to people misspelling my first name I gave worrying about age 5 ( it’s an i before e thing ) it’s not an uncommon name but it’s Scottish not English.

    The one that weirds me out is they can’t spell my last name. It’s only  3 letters and is a word in everyday use.

  80. 80.

    Timill

    @Ruckus: In Scottish SF fandom in the 80s, there was a Robert Sneddon and a Robert J Sneddon. The first is known as ‘Nojay’ to this day; the second I haven’t seen in a while.

  84. 84.

    cmorenc

    i go by a close variant of my middle name “christian”, but never by my actual first name, and my last name is phonetically pronounced in a very different manner than the spelling might seem to indicate.  These name traits were very useful in immediately knowing if the person calling me actually knows me, back in the day when unfamiliar caller number did not 99% correlate with spam calls

  87. 87.

    Ruckus

    @sab:

    My sister changed her first name to that of a precious stone. And no I have no idea why, except that she did not like her given name. And then she got married, to someone with not only a rather different last name but one that is difficult to pronounce correctly. So she lived for decades with names that I’ve only known very, very few people to have and no one with the combo.

  88. 88.

    japa21

    @raven: Must have been interesting when you said, “Chris, get in there and replace Chris.”  “No, not that Chris, the other Chris!”

  89. 89.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @cmorenc: Same here.  Most people can’t pronounce my maiden last name on the first try, and I go by my middle name, so there are two ways for people on the phone to show they don’t know me at all.

    Related: I have always gone by my middle name, which goes very nicely with my birth last name (think Maureen O’Hara).  However, I am married, so my common name  I have been known by forever is something of an alias, since my technical name is my birth first name (which I have never used),  plus my married name.  But only computers call me that, except the SSN people, who know me by the name I got my SSN under when I was in High School.

  90. 90.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @Math Guy:

    Misery is full of places like that.  Two near me during my decades-long sojourn there:

    Chamois

    Versailles

    Pronounced:

    Shamoize

    Versales (as is in “he’s in sales”)

  91. 91.

    brendancalling

    My last name, Skwire, is pronounced as it looks, “squire.”

    For some reason no one can figure that out, as it’s been pronounced “Skywire,” “Squirie,” “Square,” and yes, sadly, “Skywalker.”

    I suppose it could be worse—my last name could be “Lipschitz.”

  92. 92.

    sab

    @Ruckus: My first husband had a Ukrainian Jewish surname  name that all of his junior high school buddies shortened to “peen” which provoked his very proper mother to say “OH MY!” every time they said it.

    ETA similar last name to Mila Kunis’s.

  93. 93.

    japa21

    My wife is Polish, third generation.  Not a really weird last name with 26 consonants or anything. What was interesting is that her uncle and her father used different pronunciations of it.

  97. 97.

    MomSense

    @CaseyL:

    I remember trying to get the key to a camp when I was in college.  We were trying to find Wally Peabody in Vienna.  No one could figure it out.  Finally at the Mount Vernon General Store, the guy behind the butcher counter realized we were looking for Wally Pea BODY (accent on the second syllable) in VIE enna (long I sound).

  100. 100.

    Gvg

    My last name is not common in Florida, however I grew up in Orlando where a large car dealership with that name advertised constantly on TV and radio. No one mispronounced my name until I move 100 miles north, and for 30 years now no one gets it right. I hadn’t realized that my name was hard.
    Of course most names get mangled here. It’s a college town with 50,000 students and the city is maybe 3 times that. Florida may seem really southern from outside but we have international students and the state has had multiple ethnic migrations. Since almost no one’s name is pronounced right and I see endless excel docs of names I can’t pronounce, you just give up and go with it. Cut n paste don’t try to type.

  102. 102.

    trollhattan

    @japa21: One of the kid’s soccer teams had three Sophies, but not six! Soph, Sophie, Sophia mostly worked, or last names if coach needed to “make a point.”

  103. 103.

    sab

    @japa21: There were three with my name every year in elementary school.

    Last time I went for Buffalo Wild Wings I had to spell that same first name, because the youngster at the counter had never heard it before.

  105. 105.

    Kalakal

    I was at school with a kid whose name was Simon De’Ath. There’s 2 proper ways to say it, De Ath or Deeth, he used the first. We all called him Grim

  109. 109.

    raven

    I’m watching Kansas-Creighton and Kansas has a guard named “Remy Martin”. Come to think of it my Illini have Coleman Hawkins!

  110. 110.

    Almost Retired

    I stopped at a Starbucks before a meeting last month, and got a coffee to take with me.  My first name is “Curt,” but the barista – either through malice or poor penmanship – managed to make the “r” look like an “n.”  I didn’t notice until someone tipped me off that I was sipping out of a cup throughout the meeting with a clearly visible offensive profanity.  I just say “Frank” now when they ask me my name.

  113. 113.

    opiejeanne

    @Math Guy: Missouri also has a Versailles, and no, it’s not pronounced like that.

    There used to be a town named Hog Eye, or Hog’s Eye. They decided they liked Nevada better, and that’s not pronounced like that either. .

  114. 114.

    Brachiator

    @raven:

    Buddy of mine in high school was Arcey Miller. . . not RC.

    I have a friend whose name is RC, not Arcey.

    This is the name on his birth certificate. R. C.

  115. 115.

    cmorenc

    For about 5 years, there was an unwritten rule that every competitive-level teenage girl soccer team must have at least two players named “Brittany” on the roster.

  116. 116.

    Kalakal

    @japa21: Heh, we have some great spelling vs pronounciation clashes in Scotland

    Glamis – Glams

    Kirkcudbright – Kirkcoobree

    Menzies – can be Menzies or Ming

    Strachan – can be Strackan or Strawn

    Kilconquhar – Kinuckar

    All traps for the tourist

    Where I’m from there are 3 small towns a few miles apart: Cults, Peterculter, Maryculter – the first one is pronounced as you’d expect, the other 2 are said  Petercooter and Marycooter

  117. 117.

    sab

    OT Completely. My pitbull mix with shorter hair than a pool table is blowing her tiny coat because it is Spring! I never would have let her sleep in my bed if I thought she would shed. I have shared a bed with a German shepherd and with a Lab. Wake up every morning with a mouth full of fur. Yuck. I kove dogs, but not that much. This girl has serious separation anxiety, but she sheds.

    satby said no dogs in bed. As usual she was right.

  118. 118.

    Almost Retired

    @sab:   I think you’re right about baristas getting bored and sensing an opportunity for fun with certain names. I mean, if I were a barista and Tucker Carlson ordered a latte, there is DEFINITELY going to be a misspelling.

  119. 119.

    Suburban Mom

    @Another Scott:  I’m in!  I had the awkward experience of meeting a Dr. Fuchs and pronouncing the name on his office door as I was taught in HS German class.  He advised me (loudly) that his name was pronounced with a long U.

  120. 120.

    smith

    I once used a name search site to determine that there are over 300 people with my first and last name in the Chicago area, almost 70 within a 2 mile radius of my house. Unfortunately, many of them seem to be deadbeats. I have had many, um, intense discussions with bill collectors who will not believe they’ve reached the wrong person. Luckily, with caller ID I can now screen those people out, but while it lasted it was shocking to see how bill collectors act on the phone. Bullying is too mild a word.

    Also, is there a law that every Midwestern state has to have a town named Versailles? Illinois also has one, too,  also pronounced Versales.

  121. 121.

    eclare

    @sab:   There are no one night stands with a dog.  Once you let one in your bed, they are hard to get out.

  123. 123.

    Ruckus

    @sab:

    I got made fun of because of my height. I wrote about this here a few days ago, the only fight I was ever in was a kid who really, really went too far. Telling him to stop never worked. Kicking his ass did.

    I also had people pronounce my name funny, which some still did at my 50th HS reunion. Oh well if you can’t laugh at life, there’s something very wrong with you because it’s laugh or cry and laughing is easier.

  124. 124.

    Shana

    @Math Guy: Illinois has one too. It’s pronounced My-lan and it’s how we used to identify the Freshmen at Augustana College by their mispronunciations.

  125. 125.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @Kalakal: Scots names pronunciation is reasonable compared to Irish names. We all know Sean is “shawn”, but I’m still not sure how to pronounce that wonderful actress who was in Atonement, Ladybird, Little Women, etc. And even English names are tricky, since they never have as many syllables as unsuspecting Americans expect.  Leicester is “lester”, for just one of many examples.

  129. 129.

    trollhattan

    @A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):

    As best as I can tell it’s pronounced “Sersha.” She’s amazing in anything she does, that’s for sure.

    We have an Irish neighbor with an unspellable, approaching unpronounceable name that I butcher as “Deerlan.” Luckily he’s used to it.

  130. 130.

    pajaro

    My favorite place pronunciation, where I formerly lived was “Marais des cygnes” pronounced “Mare duh zeen”

    My oldest grandson Jonah has been called donut by his younger cousins, and it’s stuck.

  131. 131.

    NotMax

    There’s probably dozens of ways to pronounce Qijuttaaqanngittuq Valley in Canada. None of them correct.

    ;)

    @Ken

    The rest become punsters.

    You intimating that’s a bad thing?

    ;)

  133. 133.

    opiejeanne

    @japa21: I noticed that in my husband’s family, that the “land” in the second syllable of his last name is pronounced as if it’s  “Lund”, and suddenly this last name from Ireland becomes Swedish. It’s a pet theory of mine that that is where his family is from, maybe 600 years ago.

    I gave up on pronouncing it that way, trying to help people spell it correctly, and they still can’t even though it’s two syllables that break apart into two very common English words.

  134. 134.

    trollhattan

    @eclare: ​Isn’t that the truth! We had our puppy properly crate-trained and the spouse decided he needed to be free to defend the realm, and that realm quickly extended to the bed. [eyeroll]

  135. 135.

    sab

    @A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): Sheer- sa. I think that is right. I might have it backwards, Seer-sha. Actually that is probably closer.

    A lot of Irish vowells aren’t pronounced, they just modify the consonant. Do you pronounce it as “s” or “sh”. Hard vowells versus soft vowells.

    We learned all this in elementary school reading for those of you paying attention. Even in Florida. We didn’t learn Irish but we did learn hard and soft vowells.

  136. 136.

    Yutsano

    I suppose I should mention this too: Boise is pronounced with an ‘s’ not a ‘z’. When I was a freshman at Boise State University I was corrected politely but firmly by a 40something Mormon housewife who decided when her kids were old enough she was going back to school and that was it! Needless to say, I listened.

  137. 137.

    Shana

    @japa21: Same here!  There were at least 2 other Susans in all my elementary and middle school classes  so I started going by Shana as a way of differentiating myself and eventually had it legally changed. Then had one more legal document to track down for Real ID.

  143. 143.

    Kalakal

    @A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):

    You’re spot on about the English losing vowels, it’s very common.

    In Scotland the real split is when you go from Highland (Scots Gaelic) names to Lowland. I’m from an area that speaks a dialect called Doric which is confusing to other Scots let alone anyone else.

    Surshuh I think, that’s not quite right with the Sur but it’s close

    Irish names are amazing but the Welsh are no slouches

    eg Wales spelt Cymru pronounced Cumry

  144. 144.

    sab

    @Timill: The third comments every morning for the Covid  post. I had always thought his name was real, but I wouldn’t have a problem if it were not.

  145. 145.

    Scout211

    @sab:

    Saoirse Ronan hosted SNL and explained how to pronounce her name, starting at :45 in the clip from SNL

    She also sings a cute song to help us all remember how to pronounce her name.

  146. 146.

    catclub

    I asked ‘what’s his name’ of a guy in high school, (asked someone besides him). Answer was ‘Strange’

    I then referred to Mark Strange.

    later found out it was Mark Oerter, so correct for my neck of the woods.

  147. 147.

    opiejeanne

    @trollhattan: I saw her on a show where she explained how to pronounce her name, and Ser-sha is pretty close, although it’s almost almost almost Seer-shuh when she says it.

  149. 149.

    seefleur

    @Math Guy: In Maine, it’s not Calais – it’s pronounced “callous”. But what does one expect from a state that stole China, Mexico, Paris and Norway for town names?

  150. 150.

    catclub

    @Shana: ​
     Two Nancy W’s in my sister’s class. The other girl said her middle name was April and it stuck. She made it up on the spot.

  154. 154.

    catclub

    @Yutsano: ​
     But I remember you from when Yatsuno broke some filters. [hope it doesn’t now.] {i sure I hope I remembered correctly.}

  155. 155.

    The Lodger

    @sab: My dad worked with three Italian brothers who all spelled their last names differently. It’s not just the Scots.

  156. 156.

    Tehanu

    Our last name is Waggoner and I can’t tell you how many mispronunciations and misspellings we’ve heard/seen. My favorites are Wagegoner, Waggoman, Wango, Wagzora, Waygoin, and Wogger.

  158. 158.

    Scout211

    @sab:

    Did you listen to her song? It sounds like Sir-Sha or Sur-Sha to me.

    She says it rhymes with inertia.

  160. 160.

    Kalakal

    One really common trap for Americans in the UK is shire .

    By itself eg The Shire Oak ( a pub in Leeds) it’s pronounced as you expect. When it’s on the end of of a name it ranges from shuh – Yorkshuh – to sheer – Lancasheer with a sort of sher in the middle – Chesher

  161. 161.

    StringOnAStick

    When we lived in the edge of Denver, I’d occasionally come close to meeting a woman who was within two years of my age who shared all 3 names with me, only one letter was different.  Then I’m on the table  about to undergo Lasic surgery and they have her numbers dialed in, not mine, because she was scheduled that same day.  If I hadn’t spoken up after hearing the techs chatting, I would have gotten her amount of correction.  The amount of scrambling after I pointed out this case of mistaken identity was impressive.

  162. 162.

    NotMax

    @Yutsano

    And it’s only six letters long!

    But five of those are “L.”

    ;)

    When in college I worked in the campus post office (among other paying jobs) so had familiarity with the name of everyone on campus.

    One guy’s surname was entirely vowel-free. (Changed one consonant for another here to grant him a modicum of privacy): last name of Frdlk.

  164. 164.

    Scout211

    My last name before I married and took my husband’s less problematic name was a German or Austrian name with an “oe” in it. But by the  time our ancestors reached middle America, that “oe” was pronounced “ee” and it stumped everyone, especially people who spoke German.

  165. 165.

    Brachiator

    @Kalakal:

    By itself eg The Shire Oak ( a pub in Leeds) it’s pronounced as you expect. When it’s on the end of of a name it ranges from shuh – Yorkshuh – to sheer – Lancasheer with a sort of sher in the middle – Chesher

    Learned how to pronounce Lancashire from “A Day in the Life.”

    I read the news today, oh boy
    Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire
    And though the holes were rather small
    They had to count them all
    Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall
    I’d love to turn you on

  169. 169.

    Ken

    @NotMax: You intimating that’s a bad thing?

    No, no, not at all. Puns are a clever, much admired form of wordplay that everyone should —

    AH-HA-HA HA-HA HA (gasp) Sorry, I thought I could get through it without laughing.

  170. 170.

    Kelly

    Our boy cat Martin was supposed to be a girl named Eleanor Rigby. The entire litter had Beatles theme names. When we took “her” in for her first vet visit the said we might want a boy name. The only boy name she could think of was Martin because of her Martin guitar.

  173. 173.

    trollhattan

    @StringOnAStick:

    Holy crap, that exact thing happened to my buddy’s sister and they screwed up her eyes royally. When she complained they pointed to the disclaimer she had signed that tried to absolve them of liability.

    That launched a multiyear legal and medical adventure.

  174. 174.

    Geminid

    Before I moved to Greene County I lived 15 miles from Staunton, Virginia. The town started out as Beverly Mills, but in 1747 they renamed it after Lady Rebecca Staunton, wife of Royal Lieutenant Governor Gooch (he got a whole county named after him). The town’s name is not pronounced “Stawnton.” but rather as “Stanton.”

    I think that may be a Scots-Irish thing. They along with the Germans settled the Valley in the 18th century.

  175. 175.

    sab

    @Scout211: That is a big improvement from Sheeer sa where I startedd. S at beginning, sh at the end. S pronucuiation is a choice in whatever the country tries to elucidate your choices.

    Saw that and I thought WTF.

  176. 176.

    Geminid

    @Geminid: Montivideo is another place name in the Shenandoah Valley. I drove right by it today on my way to Harrisonburg. Naturally, people call it MonteVIDeo.

  178. 178.

    Dan B

    I had a speech teacher in eighth grade named Twila Stone.  She was morbidly obese and married a painfully thin man named Mr. Gross.  One side of their land yacht Chevy rode low.

    She was a great teacher.

  180. 180.

    NotMax

    @Geminind

    So many.

    BoGOta in NJ leaps to mind.

    Right here on Maui, all but the most stickly of sticklers (whether long time locals or newcomers, myself included) use the mispronunciation of Haliimaile as “HileyMiley.”

  181. 181.

    Eyeroller

    @StringOnAStick: That’s why medical groups constantly ask for your birthdate.  The odds of somebody having the same name and the same birthdate are very low.  Didn’t they ask you to confirm that?

  182. 182.

    Brachiator

    @The Lodger:

    A former work buddy and his brothers unanimously went to court to change the spelling of their last name from Fuchs to Fewx.

    Interesting that they wanted to save the pronunciation. I might have just gone for Fox.

  183. 183.

    RSA

    Thanks for the laugh.

    Years ago I was working on a project with the Germany military. One evening a couple of of us Americans went out to dinner with a German lieutenant to meet one of his colleagues. In Germany, a common convention for introductions is to simply to offer your name when shaking hands, where Americans might say, “Hello,” or “How are you,” or something like that before getting to “My name is such-and-such.” And of course many Germans were accommodating of our foreign habits, especially with our weak German language skills at the time. Anyway, I meet this new guy, and our conversation goes like this:

    Him: “Nice.”
    Me: “Hi, my name is <R>.  It’s nice to meet you too.”

    It took me way too long to realize that Lieutenant Neiss and I had just introduced ourselves.

  184. 184.

    Steeplejack

    @sab:

    I think that way deep in that thread at the top there is a comment from someone whose kid, probably a Brianna or a Dylan (girl), came home and was laughing that one of her classmates was named “Jane.”

    The familiar (to me, from the hold days) name that I never see any more is Susan.

  186. 186.

    Brachiator

    @Dan B:

    I had a speech teacher in eighth grade named Twila Stone. She was morbidly obese and married a painfully thin man named Mr. Gross. One side of their land yacht Chevy rode low.

    So, a twila stone gathers some gross.

  187. 187.

    Fair Economist

    My first name is not unusual, but baristas and other people generally get it wrong, which puzzles me. I also try using its diminutive, which isn’t unusual either although it cant be spelled two different ways, and that often results in clerks using NEITHER common spelling, but using different names altogether!

    I gave up a long time ago.

  188. 188.

    Carol

    When my son was about 4, we lived in a Spanish speaking country.  We got a dog while we were there and asked our son to name the dog.  He came right up with “Flippy”.  As it turned out, he had a little friend at play school whose name was Felipe after whom Flippy the dog was named.

  189. 189.

    sab

    I do not have children in the United States Armed Services. Lots  of Services: Army, Navy, Coast Guard. Marines.

  191. 191.

    Geminid

    @Fair Economist: My last name is unusual. When I order from restaurants and they ask my name I just tell them “Bell.” That saves time, and it’s not like they’re checking my ID when I show up to claim my order.

  192. 192.

    Reverse tool order

    Since I use them a lot, it’s embarrassing how long it took to realize a pipe nipple threaded one end (only) is not named after an appendage on my foot.

    Distinguished from threaded both ends (TBE) or threaded by grooved ( aka Victaulic) end nipples. The plain end of TOE nipples is glued or welded or put thru a gasketed connection.

    Sorry, but an engineering mentality is compelled to explain.

  193. 193.

    grandmaBear

    @Steeplejack: it seems like a lot of the girls’ names from my youth are gone: Carol, Janet, Cynthia, Margaret, Karen, Brenda, as well as Susan. I suspect that with that list one could date me to within 5 years or so.

  194. 194.

    Johannes

    I wouldn’t dare adopt “Your Highness” for myself; that form of address belongs solely to @laCaterina in our house.

  196. 196.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    My name’s not normally a candidate for mangling, but in Greece I’ve found two issues.

    First, people can never seem to keep my given name and my surname straight. I wondered for a long time how anyone could make that mistake, until I recalled that Nigel Bruce had played Watson to Basil Rathbone’s Holmes. One time I was in an office of the bureaucracy waiting for my name to be called, and it wasn’t until the fourth time someone asked for “Mr. Bush” that I realized that they were using my given name where they were supposed to be using my surname.

    And second, my name gets mangled by being transliterated from Latin to Greek characters and back to Latin. Not as impressively as Giannis Antetokounmpo’s name got mangled, but enough that when I first moved here, I had trouble paying for something because my name’s spelled very differently on my Greek national ID card from how it was spelled on my credit card. (There’s a whole other story about my national ID card and its mangling of my name: the people who were putting my information in the system mangled my name even though my US passport with my properly spelled name was sitting right in front of them. I finally had to get that card replaced because the police station had hand-written an umlaut in the Greek spelling of my last name in pen, and when I tried to get a passport later, I got upbraided for altering my ID card when it had been the cops who’d handwritten the umlaut before ever giving me the card…)

    Then there’s my middle name. I got a lot of grief about it from school bullies, to the point where I was later asked how one pronounced my middle name, and my answer was “silently”.

  198. 198.

    Sure Lurkalot

    My maiden name was close to a popular cut of steak so I endured that through middle school. My first name rhymes with a popular Italian food so I endured that through high school. All that ended in college, though the nicknames weren’t mean so I didn’t really care.

    My current last name of 2 syllables has a silent “e” in the middle that gets pronounced when we’re in Europe. Cracks us up as much as when our suitcases are called “luggages” (“I will bring your luggages to your room, Mr. 3 syllables.”)

  199. 199.

    Steeplejack

    @StringOnAStick:

    For all of my surgeries at Kaiser (not a lot but several) they asked me for my exact anme and birthday several times—pre-op nurse, anesthesiologist (also pre-op), even someone when they wheeled me into the actual O.R.

  200. 200.

    Steeplejack

    @sab:

    Pájaro is bird in Spanish, for whatever that’s worth.

    ETA: There was a good but unsuccessful restaurant in Atlanta I went to a few times called El Pájaro. I think it tanked because you’ve got to have a name easily pronounced by the gringos, or at least easily mispronounced. Pájaro ain’t it.

  203. 203.

    Anne Laurie

    @MomSense: My family was the first to call me Eeyore, because that’s how Younger Brother #1 pronounced Anne Laurie.

    (I’ve tried to live up to that noble heritage… )

  205. 205.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @satby: Of course there are 3 ways to pronounce her name ! The Irish make nothing easy (I can say that because i’m1/4 Irish at least).

  206. 206.

    Xavier

    @craigie: Amazing. My name is Craig and I get Frank all the time too. To the extent that I just say “Frank” when I go to Starbucks and the like.

  208. 208.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @grandmaBear: When I was in elementary school, the cool names were Debby and Tammy. Names sure do go in cycles and go in and out of popularity. I still favor English queen names like Elizabeth, Catherine, Mary, and Anne (and Jane) but I am old fashioned.

  210. 210.

    Steeplejack

    @Xavier:

    Need a ruling. I always thought the name from which you took your nym was pronounced “Zay-vier,” but ever since the X-Men movies came out I hear a lot of “Ex-eh-vier.” Hear it on ESPN, too.

    Which reminds me: I always thought Americans pronounced the artist’s name “Vincent Van Go,” and now the Brits are running all over the place with “Vincent van Goff” or some such. Are we idiots, or AITI because I was horribly misled* as a kid.

    * Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

  211. 211.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @satby: thanks. I’m busy learning about English cathedrals right now,  but I’ll save the link. (Going on a tour in 2 weeks.  Just got my 2nd booster just to be as safe as possible.).

  216. 216.

    Anne Laurie

    @Math Guy: There’s a ton of those geographic reading pronunciations in Michigan.  My personal favorite is PEER-ee, spelled Pierre.

  218. 218.

    Anne Laurie

    @eclare: That is a puzzler….those names don’t sound alike at all.

    According to my husband the linguistics student, they do — at least in a noisy room, or when people aren’t listening closely.

    Instead of CRAIG, the inattentive ear picks up [consonant-]RAY[-glottal], and ‘hears’ FRANK.  Which is not exactly a common name, these days, but more in use than Craig!

    (We are aware of this phenomenon because, one try out of five, across a range of 40 years and multiple states, restaurant reservation-callers manage to hear ‘Stuart’ as ‘George’.)

  219. 219.

    Kalakal

    I am very grateful for the  jackels zoom meeting a few months ago that taught me how to pronounce Keir Dullea’s name. I’d been saying something along the lines of Dullear for years

  221. 221.

    seefleur

    @Math Guy: In Maine, it’s not Calais – it’s pronounced “callous”. But what does one expect from a state that stole China, Mexico, Paris and Norway for town names?  And in Maine – LA is taken to be the towns of Lewiston-Auburn.

  224. 224.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    Late to this thread and it may be dead.

    But there is a Newark, NJ which is much more well known, and a Newark, DE where residents get very upset if you pronounce the same as the NJ town.

    To my ears the distinction is kind of subtle. If you’re talking to the DE residents, you need more of an “AH” sound in the second syllable, and maybe stretch that second syllable out a little more. Subtle but important if you want to avoid unpleasantness.​

  225. 225.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Steeplejack: I always said “Zavier” too, but I hear a lot more “Ex-avior” even among Americans.

    In the initial X sound, if that comes from the Greek, then “Ex-avior” might be more authentic depending on the spelling in Greek. The X sound in Greek is “ks” even at the beginning of words.

    And I’m with you on “Van Go” as well. I always said that, and always heard it that way. But apparently it’s a gutteral sound, so should be “Van Gokhhhh” (ptui).

  230. 230.

    JAFD

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: I’d say that the New Jersey city is Nu-uk – one-and-a-half syllables, the home of the Univ. of Delaware has two distinct syllables, definitely pronouncing the R.  In Fluffya and environs, the difference can be important.

    My name, not that common, but have to begin ‘D as in Delight’ when giving the spelling (Yeah, go by my initials here).

    At a Thanksgiving in my first decade, referred to the appetizers as “horse doovers”.  While to live down, fortunately my cousins too young to notice…

  234. 234.

    J R in WV

    @eclare: ​
     

    Our younger dogs will sometimes sneak into bed, get between us, and slide up slowly, slooowly over night until one us wakes up with a very toothy grin right in our face. They are so adorable we let them get away with that,

    One of them started leaping into bed and landing on my lower abdomen, with predictable OOOF painful results. That gets you tossed out onto the hard hickory floor immediately. Stopped after 2 or 3 times being tossed out hard. Very cuddly 70 pound pupper.

  235. 235.

    StringOnAStick

    @Eyeroller: That’s how we got it straightened out, but the two techs were just breezing through the failsafe questions like it was unimportant.

  236. 236.

    Matt McIrvin

    @JDM: At an early age my sister liked to march around the house singing the Mickey Mouse Club theme song, and the line “forever let us hold our banner high” (hi! hi! hi!) she interpreted as a bunch of gibberish: “emmer emmer omey amilee!”

    As a young pedant this annoyed me, and I tried to correct her: “It’s ‘forever let us hold our banner high.'”

    “It is NOT ’emmer emmer omey amma high’! It is ’emmer emmer omey amilee!'”

    “That’s not what I said!”

    She then decided to get a judgement from Mom, who happened to be in the bathroom at the time. She stomps over to the bathroom door and starts shouting through it:

    “Mooom!”

    “What?”

    “In the Mickey Mouse song I say it’s ’emmer emmer omey amilee’ and Matt says it’s ’emmer emmer omey ami high’, which is it?”

    “THAT’S NOT WHAT I SAID!!!”

    “What?”

    “Is it emmer emmer omey amilee or emmer emmer oomey ami high?”

    “THAT’S NOT WHAT I SAID!!!!”

    “What???”

  237. 237.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Anne Laurie: My wife’s grandfather was named Burr. This was originally not his name, it was what his little brother called him, and it wasn’t even a mispronunciation of his name, it was a toddler mispronunciation of “Brother”. But it stuck to the extent that I think he eventually changed his name legally to Burr.

  238. 238.

    lowtechcyclist

    50+ years ago, I had a friend in HS and after whose actual name was Marisa. But someone misheard it as Misty, and she became Misty from then on to a whole bunch of us.

    ‘Misty’ suited her, and frankly it’s a better name than Marisa anyway, so I’d chalk that up as a win for her.

  240. 240.

    ProfDamatu

    @Geminid: And don’t forget “Byoona Vista”! Could not figure that one out til I drove by there and saw “Buena Vista” on the sign.

  241. 241.

    SWMBO

    How about Stephan Colbert? He pronounces it coal bear and others pronounce it coal bert.

  242. 242.

    thisismyonlinenym

    Whenever I wore a flat cap people often would call me Joe (my name isn’t Joe) and if I later got to know them they would tell me it was because they thought I look like a Joe. This happened so often my wife and I now refer to flat caps as “joe hats”.

    Oddly enough when I didn’t wear a joe hat people thought my name was Mark (it’s not Mark either) because, as I have been told, I look like a Mark.

    I once told this story to my dental hygienist. She now calls me Joseph Marcus.

  243. 243.

    Anne Laurie

    @japa21: I’ve read that the everyone else in Stephen Colbert’s family pronounces their last name with a hard ‘t’ at the end.  COL-bert, not Col-BEAR, which the comedian thought sounded more… distinctive.

  244. 244.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Geminid: Can’t forget Rio Road in Charlottesville.

    For those of you unfamiliar with C’ville, ‘Rio’ is NOT pronounced like the first word of ‘Rio Grande’ but rather with a long i, like ‘Rye-o’.

    The story I heard was it used to be Route 10, and the road signs just said ‘R.10’, so people started calling it ‘Rio’ with a long i, and that stuck.

    And that reminds me of Arkansas City, Kansas, and the adjacent Arkansas River. When you’re there, don’t pronounce either one ‘Arkansaw.’  Those last two syllables are pronounced like the name of the state you’re in, not that other state, thankyewverymuch.

  245. 245.

    Geminid

    @lowtechcyclist: Thanks, I had not known the origin of “Rio” Road’s name. I can see how the direct road to downtown Charlottesville would have been Route 10 back in the day. The road that comes into the city from the northeast is still designated Route 20.

    As it happens, I’ll drive a part of Rio on my way to a job tomorrow.

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