To correct people who pronounce my name incorrectly?

[darkesttwilight]

It can get a bit embarrassing as no matter how many times I do it, some people insist on (for example) Louise not Louisa.

Are there any ways you can make it clear it's irritating but still be polite?

My name has two letters that can be switched to give a slightly more common name. Think Kirsty and Kristy. I get the wrong one constantly. And I get my S switched for a Z, even when folk are replying to an email, where my email address IS my name AND I've signed it. I correct it when face to face, but inwardly seethe over emails. Apart from the one, memorable occasion where a group email went out and I was referenced as 'Kitty'. (Not my name, but a similarly cutesy version...) I had people detour to my department to ask how I planned to deal with it.... I'm so obviously not a kitty. It has never been repeated so I think someone must have said something. I was too stunned!
I'm a teacher and try really hard to get the kids names right. I make notes in my registers about pronunciation too. I have a Laura pronounced Low (rhymes with cow) ra this year and she grins every time I say her name.

My neighbours have been calling me the wrong name for 15 years. As a result I try to correct people when it first happens as there's no way I can tell them now!!

Funnily enough, if I'm on a conf call at work & someone gets it wrong one of my colleagues will normally say something like "xxx? Wasn't aware they were on this call, but if you meant yyy then yes, they're here!!" well before I'd raise it....

I feel your pain OP
I've two friends who can't get the emphasis right. It's another Caroline or Carolynne type situation. I know they don't mean ill and I feel I will embarrass them if I raise it again but I wince every time I hear it. One if them is more of an acquaintance but the other is a friend and I have a feeling we are going to start seeing each other more often, so I don't know whether to try again or if she really cannot hear the difference.

I have this issue with my sirname. If people follow the rules of English they should pronounce it correctly because it has 1 of the letters in the middle but many people, pronounce it as if it has 2 of the same letter in the middle which makes it sound stupid. Think along the lines of its later not latter. Really fucks me off.

The addition of 1 bloody letter to make it phonetic on the DCs birth certificates would have saved them from this but DH said no. Then later told me people have said it wrong his whole life. I would have stuck to my guns if I'd known, I've seriously considered changing the spelling by deadpoll but the faff of getting everything changed kind of puts me off, which is annoying as it can be changed for about £10 each.

Do it! Kindly but firmly. There is a girl who grew up a few 100 m away from me, but went to different schools, who thinks I called Ruth. I'm not, nothing like it at all, not even any of the same letters.

I'm another with a foreign name that is easy to pronounce once you know how - I do correct people, but nicely, along the lines of 'yeah, it's pronounced like this, it's a foreign name'.

What gets on my nerves is people who address me wrongly when replying to an email from me. I mean, my name is in my signature block. There is no reason why you would want to change it. Unless you are assuming I can't spell my own name and that therefore my signature block is wrong. Grr.

I'm wondering, people with foreign names who say they're mispronounced even though they're easy, if there is a sound in the name that isn't used in the English language, so though it may be easy to you because you've grown up hearing and speaking that sound, it's difficult for Anglophones who've never heard it before.

In the same way that a French person might call a Bethan "Bezzan" or a Japanese person might call a Laura "Raura."

It's not necessarily people being rude, they might genuinely struggle to pronounce your name, or not even be able to hear that they're pronouncing it differently to you.

Obviously, this is just speculation and probably some people are just being rude twats of course.

My DM pronounces my name incorrectly.

A friend of mine is a teacher. Years ago she had a student named "Sean". At parent-teacher night the student's mum called him "Seen". The dad pronounced it the expected way.

A woman I occassionally chatted to in the playground told me how to pronounce her name but I cant hear myself mis-prouncing it. i get so paranoid about saying it i have to say it over and over in my head before i can say her name out loud. So i try to avoid saying it at all costs to the point of not approaching her. she eventually asked someone if she had upset me but i was able to explain that i got paranoid about saying hello in case i said her name wrongly! I just can't hear myself saying it wrong!

I'm wondering, people with foreign names who say they're mispronounced even though they're easy, if there is a sound in the name that isn't used in the English language, so though it may be easy to you because you've grown up hearing and speaking that sound, it's difficult for Anglophones who've never heard it before.

When I was an au pair, I hung around a bunch of English au pairs, I was the only Canadian. There was a guy in this group who always mispronounced my name. We never really got along and I thought he was saying in a funny way on purpose, to mock me. One day I corrected him, rather frostily. He became very quiet but the others gasped. They later explained that he pronounced "th" as "f" all the time because it was his dialect.

This was before I became an Anglophile

I work with a guy who admitted one day that everyone mispronounced his name. But then he wouldn't tell me how I should pronounce it because "it doesn't matter". Fair enough, his choice, but it really bugs me knowing I'm getting it wrong.

andylion/ incredible think there's a bit of both. My French friend has a daughter whose name I do struggle with because it needs a good French accent to pull it off. Conversely she pronounces my daughters name with the accent on the last syllable, which is wrong but sounds incredibly French and elegant as hell so I forgive her

However, I also know plenty of people whose names work perfectly well with English phonetics, but just induce a sort of blind panic in people who haven't seen those letters in that order before. My best friends name was like that. Seven letters, perfectly achievable pronunciation in English once you'd heard it (there were a few pronunciation options if meeting it for the first time). She got called the widest variety of things, repeatedly and annoyingly. Another friend has an Indian surname which is easy as pie in English. Hasn't helped people to get it right over the years.

I have a foreign name and people always pronounce it incorrectly even though it's one syllable. People just assume the last letter is silent which baffles me because it's similar to words we have in English and it's pronounced the same way.

Then there are people who just change the first letter. Which turns it into a man's name. Even when I've written it pretty legibly people decide I can't spell my own name.

I'm so paranoid about getting other people's name wrong!

I have an "i" in my name so all foreigners pronounce it like an "ee" sounds.

(Tim would be Teem, or Lilly would Leely)

But you're talking about using different but similar versions of your name. In my school there were a bunch of Kristina's and Kristine's. They were all Kristina, even though I knew them. I can't explain it, it's like my brain just reverted to that name even though if I wrote them a note I'd spell their name correct. One was a daughter of family who were friends of my parents (who I think were always trying to one up each other anyway which is completely besides the point) and my parents would always lecture me about not knowing her name. I still got it wrong and eventually just referred to her as "hey you" to avoid more lectures and frustration from everyone but her. Same thing happened to all the Laura's and Lauren's.

So, they may not be doing it on purpose. It's like when you get a song stuck in your head and you can't get it out no matter how hard you try.

Now once I get a name wrong, people are relegated to "hey you" as their name from that point on. It's the only way.

With foreign names, I'm sure I've come across a theory somewhere that because children grow up learning the sounds in their own language, then if they are not exposed to sounds in other languages at an early enough age, they struggle to reproduce those sounds later on, no matter how much they try.

This is equally applicable to English people trying to pronounce names/words in other languages.

I think there is something in this theory, because of my own hearing problems. I grew up not hearing the RRRR sounds in English well enough to reproduce (think "wabbit" ). I now have hearing aids, and I can make more distinctions between sounds, especially RRR sounds. And lately, my own "R"s, while never getting strong, are certainly more distinct than before.

I have similar to your example. I introduce myself as 'Louise' and they respond with 'Louisa'. It is usually the British sounding people who seem to call me the wrong thing. I don't have an issue with people who find my name difficult to pronounce in their dialect. I do feel a bit about people who add an extra vowel onto my name for no reason.

All my life I have been followed by this - form both sides.

I had a teacher who used to call out a very old fashioned name, which no-one ever answered to. We worked out it was me she meant. I went in early one day and explained that I thought that her copy of the register, typed up by the school secretary, might have my name wrong. But no, there was y name, spelled correctly. She continued to call out the wrong name and began to send me to HoY for being insolent. The card read "X refuses to answer to her name when called. She is fully aware that I may pronounce it incorrectly and deliberately refuses to amend her behaviour" Twice weekly I would point ut her hypocrisy, HoY would agree, nothing changed in 3 years.

As an adult I use a shortening, ends in an 'f'. No matter how often people first 'meet' me via email, where my signature is clear, all I get in response is a 'ph' ending.

Then again, I worked with a very angry young Welsh man who had a very Welsh name. Fine, nothing wrong with that, however, there is a very Welsh wasy to say it, using a vowel sound that English does not have, many English people can't hear it. He was so angry abut the perceived slight that there were regular shouty arguments. Sadly they made most people smile as they seemed to go like this:

Angry Welsh Man: No, my name is Sam
Bewildered English Person: Sam?
AWM: No, Sam
BEP: Sam?
AWM: No, it's fucking Sam
BEP: Fucking Sam?

It could go on for half an hour at a time

So if you do correct people, and you should, it is your name, please don't get ranty. It just makes everyone angry/confused and gets you nowhere!

People not only mispronounce my names (both foreign) they often misspell them too. I can understand that it's difficult to pronounce it properly but often people who have seen my name in writing many times still write the English version of my name. It's annoying me, especially when I put so much effort into getting the spelling of their and their children's gaelic names (I'm in Scotland) right.

It's when they argue with me as to how to pronounce my non English name correctly.

My dd is Joanna, now she is usually Jo but when she was small we used to chorus A...at the incessant Joannes. It was worse because I love the name Joanna and am not keen on Joanne. What a difference an 'a' makes.

It's happened to me all my life. People either say it wrong or spell it wrong. It's not an uncommon name either.

As a result, I'm very careful with other peoples' names and check how they pronounce or spell their name.

MrsGentlyBenevolent - so glad it's not just me! People continually give me the wrong name and always the same one. A bit like if my name is Lucy, people always call me Leah. It happens lots, teachers/employers/friends. The names aren't even that similar! It does upset me sometimes actually because I worry that I'm just so forgettable that people don't even remember my name.

I went through a phase of ignoring teachers that did it when I was younger and more obnoxious because I found it so rude that they didn't know my name (not new teachers, ones that had known me a while). I grew out of that though and now just correct people gently.

When I moved to ireland my work friends had not end of fun with my trying to guess the pronunciation of irish names