Living with a unique name that is mispronounced.

[AliPG]

I've spent my whole life recorrecting people who mispronounce my name. Its 3 letters long but the 1st letter is often said wrong. The spelling makes it appear a certain way which i get why it would be pronounced wrong. At school it wasn't too bad apart from one teacher who got my name wrong every art lesson. This really annoyed me after a while and even annoyed the rest of the class. Called the register every week but stumbled every time. No other teacher did that. Same teacher pronounced my polish friends surname wrong everytime. I would rather however have a forename that can be pronounced easier.

I dread starting a new employer or hearing my name read out in public settings. When people actually get my name right without asking I'm almost surprised.

At my last job my name was pronounced correctly at interview and throughout my role, bar a couple of people I had to correct. I have now started a new job a month ago and from the get go my name has been pronounced wrong. I corrected interviewer who is my line manager 3 times at interview . She gets it right now thankfully. What I don't get is why on meetings when people hear my name they then still say it wrong. Are they not listening? I'm guessing they read it as it says which I totally get but it is still annoying. Should i just pipe up and say to everyone my name is pronounced like this?

For those who experience this please let me know how you feel and how you deal with this particularly at work. Sometimes it doesn't bother me other times it just grates me when I have told people what it is. I just had to message someone privately who introduced me at a large meeting but said my name wrong. Thing was he has sat on team meetings over the last month and heard my name being said a few times now. He did apologise and ask how to pronounce it which is fair enough. But he had no need to introduce me as all new starters had already been introduced in the 1st month which just annoyed me more and neither is he a manager. My manager said we have already introduced new starters.

Some people don't correct people but I don't see why I should be called the wrong name my whole life. When people ask me how to pronounce it it makes me feel valued and they acknowledge they could get it wrong. When people just keep ignoring it annoys me. It's 3 letters . When people ask if they can call me something totally different I find it ignorant and offensive. I know someone called Joanna and often people call her Joanne. It annoys her and her name is much more known.

I don't know if changing the spelling of my name will help or not for eg work. I'm halfway through life now.

Sorry just having a rant. Will probably feel better tomorrow but for some reason I feel upset today as it is embarrassing for both me and the person saying it wrong. Cant even concentrate on the meeting. It's tiring!!

People should really consider things like this when naming their children. My name isn’t hard to pronounce but there are 2 spellings of it and mine is the less common way so every sports day certificate, every job, even my first driving licence had it wrong because everyone assumes it’s the other way. Even the DVLA, even though I filled the form out with the correct spelling on. It’s never massively bothered me but it is inconvenient. It would also be annoying if people were saying wrong all the time.
Please just keep correcting people until they get it right. It’s really not hard to remember someone’s name.

Piccalards ... I misread it on a tin as a child and it stuck in my brain, as I don't think I said it out loud for some time and therefore wasn't corrected. Still cracks my mum up to this day.

That is brilliant!

I think that’s ok. My friend has an Arabic name and chooses to use a different one.

Her name has a specific arrangement of vowels and she said native English speakers cannot get it right so she prefers to use a nickname.

My name isn't mispronounced but is regularly misspelled and that drives me mad! Especially in emails - it's right there! In my signature and the bloody address!

I mistakenly (and repeatedly) called a Kristy Kirsty at a work event recently. She didn't correct me and I was mortified when I realised. I got in touch and apologised afterwards. This thread has made me wonder why her parents didn't go with the much more obvious spellings of Christy/Christie/Khristy/Khristie though...

Rover?

It’s not a “sign of affection” when the other person does not like it and you never bothered to check.

It’s absolutely rude. Just call people their names unless they tell you otherwise.

It’s not “walking on eggshells” to call people their actual names.

I’m with you OP. I have a name that can be pronounced 3 different ways, of which mine is probably the least common in England. I’m quite shy and often find it awkward to correct people, especially if it’s not the first time I’ve told them. On any baby name thread when an OP is considering a name that can be mispronounced someone will come along and say “You only need to tell people once!”, which I really wish was true but is very far removed from the reality in my experience!

I’ve got better at correcting people as I’ve got older and more confident (and I generally do for people I’m going to see regularly and don’t bother for ones I won’t meet again) but I found it awful as a child correcting teachers/other adults. People can be so rude- I’ve had a teacher say “No, that’s <most common pronunciation> “ and refuse to use my pronunciation, been asked multiple times “but WHY isn’t it <most common pronunciation>” and had a very confusing conversation with a friend I’d known for 3 years at the time when he was saying “but your name is really <most common pronunciation>”. It turned out we were talking at cross purposes and he thought that my parents had named me the most common pronunciation and I had decided to change it in my teens as my own personal preference. Given the amount of angst my name has caused me this is the last thing I would do

A friend at school had a name with 2 possible pronunciations. She politely corrected a teacher who said “Well I’m going to call you <other pronunciation> as it sounds classier”, and another girl in my class became known as <It’s name> rather than <name> because of the number of times she replied with <It’s name> when a teacher did the register. My number one criteria for naming my own DC has been that there is no ambiguity in pronunciation (or as little as is possible!).

Mine is also the least common of 3 ways to pronounce my forename @ThatBeverleyMacca and I never like to correct people either, although my husband will.

I'm over it, I have a name that is extremely uncommon for an English person but could potentially sound like a couple of other common english names if misheard - when people ask for my name over the phone now i'm just like, yeah, my name's Ben/Sam

My name gets mispronounced at first cos it’s spelt wrong ( ea, instead of ae thanks mum!)

However when I say my name, they usually get it right.

Because it's up to Robert whether he's offended by being referred to as Bob.

When I got married (and took a Polish surname) I added a message to my email sig for a while which explained the pronunciation, that helped I think.

Same experience. I have a common name so nothing unusual. Think ‘Sarah’. My boss insisted on calling me ‘Sara’, no matter how many times I corrected him. He said I was being pedantic.

So I started calling him Jake… when his name was Jack. He didn’t like it funnily enough.

Having names misspelt is horrible and really difficult for people to handle

mine is spelt as it is said and is basic traditional British but no one gets it right anyway so I am always known by a nickname

donf think it bothers me that much

Definitely add a say my name to your signature. Most people want to get it right, and to be honest they want to say it right, but some people don’t seem to learn from when someone pronounces it correctly.

A friend's name is Sara, but she pronounces it as Sarah. Names can be very confusing

My personal experience is that that doesn’t work. People ask me how to pronounce my name, I tell them and add an extra guidance for the bit in the middle which looks difficult to them. Thru nod wisely and go and do their own thing.

Every Sara that I know, pronounce their name the same as Sarah.

Its supposed to be pronounced A neigh. Did her parents change the pronunciation?

No it’s not!

I totally disagree with the link that you’ve made there. I’m quite judgmental about parents giving their children names which are meant to stand out/be different etc, but I’m really good at listening and paying attention to names and getting them right, can’t abide it when people don’t.

It helps that I have worked in a profession in which it’s been essential for me to interact with loads of people from different backgrounds and get their names right quickly, and then do it all again with different people the next day. It’s rare that a name will surprise me, and whatever it is I just get on and get it right, but I’m judgmental as fuck about what I sometimes perceive to be silly and show off parents.

This is a really excellent post.

I am finding the inability of many on this thread to understand that unusual names and spelling, and words in language systems with different sounds and spelling conventions, are very difficult for many people really almost a bit shocking.

Yes, I think that makes sense, really, what else is a person going to do?

I think that what surprised me about my daughter's name is that I myself am a native English speaker, and my only real second language exposure before adulthood was school French, liek most people have where we are. And I can hear the distinctions in those vowels just fine. But my mother can't.

I'm pretty good with accents generally, I am not a bad mimic and I can place them a lot of the time too, whereas my mum can't. My conclusion is that there is a lot of individual variation with this sort of thing. The same way there is a lot of variation between natural spellers and people who struggle.

Me too, it would not occur to me to think they might be differernt. I'm not in the UK, so maybe that is why.