Living with a unique name that is mispronounced.

I work with Sadhbh. 99 times out of 100 she is called Sophie. She has begun answering to Sophie.

Is it Ali??

We have a lot of South Koreans in our workplace. I am astonished at how many people cannot say the Korean names, even after weeks/months of knowing someone.

Many of the Koreans give themselves an English name.
I used to be annoyed by this, not with the Koreans but that the English were so hopeless at names that people felt the need to find an 'easy' name for them.

But then I had a really interesting conversation with one of the Korean guys. He was explaining that culturally names always come with a form of address attached. You never say - Sung Hu, you always say older-brother-Sung Hu or Mr-Boss-Sung Hu. To just say Sung Hu is pretty rude, as aknowledging status is very cultural. So for him, to be called plain Sung Hu feels really uncomfortable, and for a child to call him Sung Hu is awful. So he would much rather find an Enlgish name and use that and then it doesn't matter that it is plain Joseph or whatever.

That's like Hermione (which everyone knows now because of Harry Potter), Persephone and even Penelope I've heard pronounced incorrectly.

My pet difficulty is Sara. I find it really difficult to remember for some friends that it's Sarah because to me, Sara rhymes with Zara.

I have a very simple first name, but lots of people where English isn’t their first language, pronounce it as they would in their home country. I have a slightly unusual surname which is very rarely pronounced correctly, I couldn't care less about either, it’s never done with malice. I only correct if someone asks me if they have pronounced it correctly.

I think only one person has ever pronounced my name correctly without asking…used to drive my mum nuts when I was a kid. 40 years in and I honestly don’t care anymore. I sometimes catch myself thinking my name in the wrong pronunciation as well 😂

Move to another country... . having people who speak a different language valiantly attempt pronunciation when all the letter combinations and positions are totally alien to the way their language is pronounced, is liberating!!

It is very weird how people persist with an incorrect pronunciation. This seems to be the recurring theme here.

Most of our neighbours, some of whom have known us for 25 years, pronounce my name wrong. In conversation with them, my husband will say it the right way, yet they never seem to take it in. That's what annoys me most I think.

I’ve found it easier to just change the spelling of my name from my native language to the usual English spelling. This seems a more reasonable solution than expecting everyone else to change.

I tihnk giving people something to hang it on, like PP suggests, really helps. I'm just not good with names and like others can find them hard to process if they're unfamiliar or unusual pronounciations! I had a colleague whose name was Adeline. I pronounced it Ad-a-leen for ages until she corrected me and said, 'it's actually Ad-a-line, like Caroline'. Once she gave me that to hang it on, I never got it wrong again!

My surname is the phonetic spelling of a word that the English language spelling convention has over complicated. The number of times people wave away my offer to spell it for them is unreal. I watch them typing or writing and then just stop because I can't possibly be saying what I am and their minds won't allow it. They really resist deleting the incorrect spelling.

That said, I love my name and would never want to change it. It's their problem, not mine.

I know someone called Ioana (she's Romanian I think) which is pronounced
Yo-anna. I noticed recently that when she answers the phone at work she started saying 'Hello Joanna speaking.'

I guess she's got so tired of saying 'Yo-anna speaking' and people hearing 'Joanna' and calling her Joanna that she's given in and started calling herself Joanna.

If you don't want to change your name or the way it should be pronounced (and I get it, why should you?) could you at least find a phonetic spelling to adopt that works for most people? So in Ioana's case she could start spelling it Yoanna on her emails and on work related stuff, then when people phone her or refer to her they will know how they are expected to say it.

I find Mia (Me ah ) and Mia (My ah ) difficult. I invariably say it wrong.
Also Marie ( Maree) and Marie (Mah ree).
Please give us a bit of slack @AliPG

Some of us are not bad listeners , for some reason we have trouble retaining more unusual names. I find it so embarrassing to have to keep checking how to pronounce names but my brain finds it really hard to process them.

That's not how people's brains work. It can be difficult to remember a word, including a name, you've never encountered before. If it weren't we could all learn new languages so easily, at least the vocabulary.

Honestly some people really just do not listen!
My daughters name, even the friends I see every week and hear me pronounce her name correctly that regularly, still pronounce it wrong. I've just given up correcting it because its awkward and I'm tired of it. It's honestly like they just don't hear the difference.
I've had to accept that it will be up to my daughter how she feels about the pronunciation as she gets older and how much she chooses to fight it but if she wants me to start helping her correct people continuously then I will.
I also have a name which people ignore a letter of to change the pronunciation and my mum gave up correcting people too. I don't mind either pronunciation though, so I don't really bother correcting people but I do introduce myself with the correct pronunciation.
I think people who have names that can only be pronounced in one way just don't even consider that they might be getting other peoples names wrong.

My youngest daughter has a name that is frequently mispronounced. To some extent I anticipated it would be, I have found it's not always mispronounced in the way I expected though.

People seem to have problems with the vowel in the middle, they shorten it a lot which I didn't really expect, and also there is a short-e sound at the end that people leave off, which I did think might happen.

What I have realised over the years as people have tried to say it correctly is that quite a lot of them can't actually hear the vowel distinctions in the name. Even if I say it correctly, and then the way they say it, to compare, they can't hear the differernce. So there is no way they are going to be able to say it correctly when they can't even hear the sounds.

Had I been very worried about this, I would have chosen a differernt name, in the end I don't think it matters much and that's the attitude I've taught to my daughter. Some of my family have given her a nicname instead which is fine.

I've since learned from my other daughter, who works with a lot of immigraints from China, that many of them choose "English" names for a similar reason, many English speakers are not able to hear or reproduce some of the sounds in their names correctly. Which makes sense, as the brain loses the capacity to hear some language distinctions if we are not exposed to them early enough.

You can certainly blame them if you've told them before.

I have a virtually unpronounceable welsh name but live in England so I get this. My mother is almost the only person I regularly speak to who knows how to say it properly

I get all sorts and am thoroughly used to it.
it doesn’t massively bother me but Yanbu to be hacked off. I think putting an explanation on your email signature is a great idea. People don’t like to get names wrong so help them along a bit.

Absolutely!

I don’t have any memory for sounds. If someone has an unusual name and I learn it through reading it first, I will really struggle if the pronunciation is different.

If I am introduced first then that’s ok, I can turn that into a spelling in my head from how it sounds and will be fine from there.

I do have time and grace for people who are clearly trying and their brain won’t let them be great!

It’s the ones who cannot be arsed I have no time for.

But pronounced Bibble.

I also have a Polish name with 3 letters - I honestly don’t mind. I grew up in Sweden and it was sometimes mispronounced by teachers, although when I think about it now I’m not sure why. The first letter is pronounced the same way in both languages! But it honestly has never particularly bothered me. I’ve lived in the UK for the last 22 years and I’ve been called many different things. It’s an unusual name for the UK so I accept it’s going to be mispronounced. A very good friend of mine mispronounced my name on a daily basis for about 5 years, in the broadest Ozzie accent imaginable, and frankly it was just endearing.

I can understand it’s frustrating but don’t let it get to you too much. It’s innocent mistakes most of the time.

I have both an uncommon first name and surname. My middle name too, although a celebrity has made that one easier in the last 20 years or so!
My Christian name is very rarely spelled correctly by anyone, but pronunciation is fine as there really isn’t any other way of saying it. My surname on the other hand has had so many odd and ridiculous pronunciations over the years, occasionally people will just sort of half utter the first letter and then tail off as they have no idea how to proceed. I don’t let either bother me anymore as I’d waste too many years of my life correcting people 😂