Sounds fair, right?
Names are important. Mine is Rhiannon.
Ree-ANN-in, not Rye-hanna, not Ree-anon and certainly not Rihanna, whose first name is Robyn, anyway.
It's an old Welsh name and I come from an old Welsh family. Frankly I'm lucky I didn't get saddled with Blodeuwedd or Goleuddydd. Mine are a consonant-loving people, and I'm fortunate that the only double-D's passed down through my family remain safely in my bra.
Obviously the more lyrical Welsh pronunciation is ideal, but for regular gringos like me, the American pronunciation works just fine. Just say it like I say it, it's not that hard.
So what's the big deal about an occasionally mispronounced name, didn't Shakespeare's Juliet say there wasn't anything in them anyway?
Yeah, she also took a roofie from a priest and it's not like Juliet Capulet is that great of a name to begin with.
We all know there's only one fictional character who can pull off rhyming first and last names and that's one Mister Dwayne Wayne. You, Juliet, are no Dwayne Wayne. Until I turned 30, it rarely bothered me.
Colleagues of nearly ten years would call me ReeAWNa or the like and I would give precisely zero damns, but something about Hot Latin Boy's name being botched with the same startling regularity as mine --his only has four letters, how dumb do you have to be to screw up four letters???-- made me draw a line in the mispronounced sand.
When folks on the board of a nonprofit receiving hundreds of dollars worth of free design from HLB and me gave up on saying our names correctly after months of constant correction, we walked away.
If they didn't value us enough as humans to just say our damn names then certainly they didn't deserve our work. We took our ball and went home. It wasn't just disheartening, it was dehumanizing.
There's nothing that says "I don't really care about you" quite as effectively as failing to call someone by their name. Just ask Endora.
Which isn't to say I don't appreciate a learning curve. In my part of Mexico, people pepper their Spanish with indigenous words.
It took me ages to nail cempoalxochitl, the Nahuatl name for the special marigolds used to adorn Day of the Dead altars, but when HLB's nephew introduced me to his girlfriend Ixchel, I made sure to get it right. No need to tick off an already-angry Mayan jaguar goddess, amirite?
No matter what Shakespeare says, names are worth something.
That's why people don't name their kids Herpes McStrippershoes. Our names are the most basic personal identifiers we have. When a person not only fails to correctly pronounce, but fails to care about correctly pronouncing, someone's name, that person is a tool who violates the most basic of human courtesies and deserves the starring role in the one person play "Punch Me in the Face" a Punch Me in the Face Production for Seriously Now, Just Punch Me Studios.
I don't think that's unreasonable, do you?
My maiden name was a nightmare. It is seriously French, but I grew up in Cajun south Louisiana...shouldn't be a problem, right? Wrong. I spent half of my high school years correcting teachers. I finally quit answering when they got my name wrong. I took my hubby's name since it seemed so much easier. We live in Texas, so there is no way people could screw up a Hispanic last name, especially a name shared by a certain member of CHiPS back in the 1970's. Wrong. I give up.
ReplyDeleteOh, never EVER underestimate a Texan's ability to screw up a Spanish word. After twelve years in Austin I finally got used to driving on GWADALOOP instead of Guadalupe Street, MANSHACK instead of Manchaca, and PURDINALICE instead of Pedernales.
DeleteI can see how it would grind on you. I find it a bit hurtful when people who definitely know my name isn't spelled L-a-u-r-a just spell it that way anyway, but I probably don't see it nearly as often you hear yours mispronounced. And I don't really care if "strangers" misspell it, again, different than hearing it aloud.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I don't really care if strangers I'm never going to see again screw up my name. Once I went dancing, gave my same name to three different partners but didn't correct any of them. That night I was simply Diana, Ariana and Hannah. But if I've known you for a while, I don't think it's too much to ask to get it right, on paper and out loud.
DeleteA friend of mine was told by a client, "I'm never going to be able to remember your name. Do people call you something else. Like Auntie?" Sadly, my friend isn't self employed,so she didn't have the option of dumping her.
ReplyDeleteOh that just boils my buttons. It's one of the reasons I refuse to allow people to call me by nicknames based on my name. The one exception was my brother, who through the chemo-brain couldn't manage HLB's first name. He asked if he could just use the first initial, it didn't bother HLB and it was fine.
DeleteStill, I hope your friend finds a better, more thoughtful client.
Many people feel the need to chop my first name in half without asking if it's OK, no matter how many times I say it in full or spell it out fully online.
ReplyDeleteMy last name has 5 letters, the last of which is a silent E, and it freaks everyone out. All attempts to pronounce it start with two syllables, and either rearrange letters or find the weirdest way to pronounce an O that they can. I am often lenient with the "ol" sound in it because that's hard to pronounce with some accents and speech impediments, but that's no excuse for sticking with some renditions, especially after I've said it to you multiple times.
I feel you. I have to come down with a fierceness on anyone who calls me "Rhi." It's just not happening. Again, it's not the first botched job that bothers me. Mispronounce away until I correct you, but once I correct you a few times, there's no reason to stick with bad variations.
DeleteMine was more of an issue with my last name also.
ReplyDeleteI too had a French maiden name, via Quebec. My grandparents had taken up a more Americanized name to survive living in Kansas. My great-grandmother however insisted on it being pronounced correctly, and when I went to jr. high I decided it should be as well.
However being from the south I often got Blanchard, adding several letters and dropping others all together. Seriously. Just stop it right now.
And while my married name is Norwegian, it is mostly straight forward.
Of course my issue was with being called Jenny, which I despise. Jen or Jennifer is just fine, thank you very much.
See? Even Jennifers have problems. I hope you correct them gently but firmly. No one has ever called me Rhi or Rhirhi more than once and lived to tell the tale.
DeleteMy Dad always told me that the most important thing a person owns is their name so get it right. As for street names, in our area many of them came from our Scottish ancestors and our street in particular is woefully mangled. When someone local asked me where I live and I told them they just looked at me blankly.
ReplyDeleteI totally just envisioned your dad as Angela Bassett playing Tina Turner in What's Love Got To Do With It, fighting Ike in court for the use of her name. Thank you for that!
DeleteWe usually get more trouble with my husband's name - which, if you just sound it out phonetically you'll do fine. He once had a professor pronounce his name as "Raging Submarine" - a great name for a band, but wildly, impudently wrong.
ReplyDeleteMy name doesn't get mucked up very often, but so many people pronounce it with a dull, depressing mournful sound so it rhymes with "boring." I hate that. The only exception was a French teacher who used to pronouce it like "la reine" and that was very nice.
Oh my goodness. Raging Submarine is SPECTACULAR. I hope you two still use it between yourselves on occasion. It's too good/awful to surrender entirely.
DeleteMy name is now super popular in the under-5 set, but back in the 80's, the few people (in the US) who knew it always asked me if I was named after the Australian pop star with the famous booty. As such, I had SO SO many errors with it... Heidi, Kayla, Kaylee, Hailey, Kevin (one particularly dense Chilean Spanish professor), and I always appeared in programs or on rosters as "Kyle", which led to more than one wacky misunderstanding as to my gender. Then my maiden name was a fairly common Germanic one, but one with a metric butt-ton of acceptable spellings... clearly ours was the best, but no one EVER tried that one first.
ReplyDeleteOh, and street names? One of the main drags in my town is Piklaklakaha. Most people just call it PK Avenue.
Kevin is great! I got Raymond once, and I'll admit, I'd probably call it PK Avenue, too.
DeleteMy real first name is Brida, pronounced "BREE-da." At least one time out of three: "Hi, I'm Brida." "Nice to meet you, Britt-a." After I JUST SAID IT. Other people don't even try, but just decide I'm named Brenda, Rita, Frida, Lena, or even, in one instance, Maria.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, my job involves e-mailing a lot of writers I never meet in person. Surprisingly often, the answer comes back: "Hi, Brian." Even though my first name is in my signature and in my e-mail address. They are writers, so you'd think they could read (sigh).
I will never, ever understand people who are careless with other people's names.
My name is spelled wrong more than it's spelled right, so it doesn't especially bother me. What gets to me is business email chains--they start out correctly, but then halfway through they just give up and I become Christine or Christy or some other other bewildering variation.
DeleteWhat a completely cool name!
DeleteOh that makes me INSANE. There are two women, both patently horrible people, who I should've known were trouble by their failure to spell my name correctly when my name is --like yours-- in both my email address and signature. Plus I always close my emails with my name. They both have unusual names, too, which makes it that much worse.
DeleteI'm a Katie. A real, honest-to-God, on-my-birth-certificate Katie. I am not a Katy, and I am sure as hell not a Kate. Do not call me Kate. I am also not a Katherine, which people occasionally try to throw at me in an attempt to be formal/intimidating/douches.
ReplyDeleteOn a related note, I used to have a private IQ test for people applying for jobs with me. I'd put my email address, which was k.lastname @ placethatiworked.org. 10 seconds on the staff page of the Place That I Worked website would easily allow an interested person to figure out my first name and discern that I was a girl. If you then sent me an email addressed to Mr. LastName or (shudder) Gentlemen, you failed. And got heartily mocked.
That's a great test. I'd do the same with press releases. Whenever I'd get stuff sent to Mister Gammill, especially with claims that they LOOOOVE my work (how Hollywood vague is that?) it would go directly into the trash.
DeleteSorry, but now that I've seen it, if this well stricken in years couple is ever visited by an angel and a child is born unto us, I -will- be naming it Herpes McStrippershoes....
ReplyDeleteI believe that was in the original Old Testament version of the Sarah and Abraham story.
DeletePeace! Peace! Some of us have defective brains. I swear I'm missing that particular nucleus which remembers names and how to pronounce them. I especially have trouble if a name almost sounds like another name of someone I know -- like a short "a" instead of a long "a" or emphasis on a different syllable. It's not that I don't care, it's that I CAN'T keep it straight. Like asking me to say it with a French accent, which I'll never ever manage, even though I took 5 semesters in college in the attempt to learn it. Consider us disabled, and have mercy.
ReplyDeleteMarvel, I just don't know. If people can remember how to say "Elephant" and "Shopping Cart" just to think of two examples, than surely my paltry three syllables shouldn't be the exception. Like I said, I make exceptions for accents. Hell, I don't even say my name as well as some Welsh people do, but I show no quarter to out-and-out botching after a liberal grace period.
DeleteTo be fair, I manage most names that contain native phonemes (Southern American). I could pronounce yours, I'm sure. And I make earnest efforts to call people by full names if they prefer (Thomas instead of Tom, for instance). But my husband was mocking my attempts to say "Uruguay" just last night. One poor co-worker who was from Madrid asked me to please just pronounce her name the "American" way after suffering my well-intentioned efforts to get the Spanish pronunciation correct. I have NEVER EVER gotten a native Mandarin name correct. There is another co-worker whose name reminds me of Gene Rodenberry and/or Rod Serling (of Star Trek/Twilight Zone fame) and even though his first name is "Rodney" I always want to call him "Gordon." HOW DO YOU GET GORDON FROM RODNEY? I don't know! It's my brain, but I just live here. All I ask is a little mercy for those of us who are honestly trying, but struggle, which is different from those who just don't care/bother.
DeleteOh man, did I need this post. I switched to a different department a few weeks ago, and none of my new colleagues (who had all met me before; I've been at this workplace several months already) can be bothered to remember my name. It's Katrin. Not Kathryn, not Katrine, not Katrina. It's gotten so that when someone happens to get it right, I'm so thrown that I forget to answer.
ReplyDeleteToday a coworker actually un-corrected himself: "Hey Katrin...oh, sorry, Katrine."
I suppose I should be grateful that one of them has at least stopped calling me by the name of completely different colleague, which sounds nothing like mine.
Embarrassingly, I once had a mental block on a guy named Howard I always wanted to call Walter. I KNEW his name was Howard, and I'd always tell myself "There's Howard say Howard. For the love of GOD SAY HOWARD" but there was always that little part of my brain that insisted "No! Walter!"
DeleteI'm a bit hard of hearing so it's better if I can see your name in writing as well as hear it. I remember much better that way. On the other hand, if I had a dollar for every time I get called "Louise" I could buy an island in the Caribbean. Unfortunately mine is the more old-fashioned and much less common version. (The A on the end is important to me so just please leave it alone!) However, either way it means Warrior Woman - which I quite like!
ReplyDeleteI think Louisa is a lovely name, and that's not just because I lived in Louisa County for a while and have a fondness for Shirley MacLaine's character in What a Way To Go.
DeleteI've only know one Louise (she was a middle Louise) and I still have nightmares about her.
FWIW I love the name Louisa; if only I'd had a daughter. Louisa May Alcott!
DeleteRhiannon isn't that hard if you're old and remember the song. But that probably brings its own set of irritations, as well as twirling and velveteen. I think it's a lovely name.
My name is currently popular if you're under 6, but wasn't at all when I was growing up. I always hated and despised "Abby." I've noticed friends of friends on Facebook, usually men who want to put me in my place, tend to call me Abby. They generally can't spell either. Coincidence?
Hmm, only 4 letters, right? I get letters added in for good measure: Yosha, most often, but also Yoza, and others.
ReplyDeleteI second the "Till I hit 30" as well. Nowadays if people can't be bothered to pronounce my name correctly, I can't be bothered with them most of the time.
One resulting quirk? I tend to always call someone by the name they introduce themselves to me with. I have ended up the only person to not call Matthew Matt, for example.
Good on you. I'm the same way with people. It got a little awkward once with a friend who had always been known by his short name by our mutual pals who had known him far longer than I. I had to pull it out of him that he preferred his full name, but by gum, I've called him that every since.
DeleteI feel your pain by way of my daughter. The poor girl's name is Breanne and just about everyone wants to put an "a" at the end of her name. They also like to pronounce it with a soft "a" instead of the hard "a" sound. She hates hearing "Bre-AHHH-Na."
ReplyDeleteOh God. I get Brianna All. The. Time. In both those variations, too.
DeleteSheesh.
ReplyDeleteThat's just rude
(which is also four easily pronounced letters too, come to think about it).
Oddly enough, some folks have managed to even misspell my little name.
Never understood that.
Wow, you almost have to give them marks for creativity. I mean, it's easy to misspell Rhiannon, but to screw up Jason takes an impressive dedication to inaccuracy.
DeleteIt's hard to believe with as many Stevie Nicks/Fleetwood Mac fans in the world, that the name Rhiannon gives so many people trouble!
ReplyDeleteI'm a Katherine but I shorten to Kate. Drives me bonkers when people look at my full name and decide I must be a Kathy. First off, don't assume I shorten it at all! If you're going to guess, you have pretty good odds of getting it wrong. I know you only have my full name in front of you, and if I want you to call me something else I'll let you know, thanks.
Oh yeah, I get a lot of middle-aged women asking me if I was named after the song. I wasn't. Although I do have a photo with me standing next to four girls, all a few years older than I was at the time, who WERE named after pop songs. There was Angie and Layla and Chelsea and Amie. I got strongarmed into being in the shot because no one could believe the name existed before it was twisted out of the flat nasal recesses of Stevie Nicks' coke-dusted brain. If looks could kill I'd need a better lawyer than the one I have now.
DeleteI once knew I would be quickly leaving a brand new job within 30 seconds of my first day. My new boss told me "I'm a very important man and your name has too many syllables. I'm shortening your name to Mel (from Melodie)." Those two sentences pretty much summed up what a complete pompous jerk he is. Ironically I'd given up the fight for my full name and pretty much go by Mel and never would have noticed if he hadn't made an announcement out of it.
ReplyDeleteOh wow. I'm trying to come up with something more profound than "What a tool" but I can't. What a tool.
DeleteLuckily, my first name is rarely butchered. But what irritates me is when people try to shorten my name or give me nicknames. My name is Amy. It is not Ames or Amers!
ReplyDeleteBut my last name...oh good gravy! The first half is a body part, the last half is ram, pronounced like rum! Instead most people butcher it and it sounds more like a last name for a an adult film star.
My dear maternal grandmother's biggest pet peeve with her last name is that the name is French. However, since it ends in "ez," people are always trying to give it a Latin flare.
Amers...I've never heard of that one.
DeleteIn defense of those who've wounded your grandmother's Gallic pride, I don't think it's such a crime to hedge your bets by pronouncing a name with a historically culturally-affiliated suffix the way the culture that uses it the most does...THE FIRST TIME. After that, I've got your granny's back.
Yes, Rhiannon, thank you for being so firm on this! I am also very precise about names, and people sometimes tell me that I'm being too uptight. Well, what's wrong with being a little uptight about things that matter?
ReplyDeleteMy name is easy to pronounce, although sometimes people don't hear me correctly over the phone because they don't expect to meet a woman with my name. So the pronunciation isn't an issue; it's the spelling that gets people. I often see "Ricky" or "Ricki" or "Rikki" when my name is actually spelled like the middle example with an E on the end. I don't think it's that difficult to remember, but there are some people who simply refuse to ever get it right. I have been wearing this name for 30 years and I have relatives who still won't spell it correctly. It smacks of disrespect and I'm sick of it.
And also like you, I abhor nicknames. The only people allowed to call me "Rick" are my parents. Everyone else gets a death glare.
That's the thing, it DOES matter. I'm much more forgiving on spelling than on pronunciation, but even then I was at the point of dropping a client because she was making a ton of cash off me without showing me the decency of spelling my name correctly. I found it ironic, because her name is a non-traditional spelling of a fairly common name, so I thought she would've been extra careful.
DeleteMy name is never mispronounced in Sweden, mostly because it's one of the most common ones. But my fiancées family back in his homeland have a really hard time pronouncing it since it does not have a vocal at the end. I get all sorts of variants with an e or a or ia attached to it.
ReplyDeleteMy father has real issues speaking my fiancées name, or his brothers and fathers. He can't seem to be able to learn that it's a short a not a long a in all of their names. And he really likes them! He adores my fiancée and get along spiffingly with my father-in-law to be.
Thus said, I still can't understand how someone could mispronounce Rhiannon, unless they have a speech impediment.
Me either! It's tough for a lot of folks here in Mexico to say it correctly, because the vast majority of women's names end with an A here, thus sometimes the best I can get is Rhianna.
DeleteHLB's mother calls me Re-Hanny though, and the fact that I still like her speaks volumes about her charm and my current level of medication.
This conversation reminds me of a man I once knew whose last name is Cavedo. Around these parts, it's a historic name used as a street name. It's pronounced Cah-VEE-dough. As hard as it is to believe, he came across a fair number of people who pronounced it Cave-doo.
ReplyDeleteI have to feel sorry for people who do not have the wherewithal to say to themselves - well, however you say it, it certainly can't be Cave-doo!
My real name is Marjorie (for which no one ever seems to believe Daisy is a traditional nickname, but that's what I get for having weirdly archaic parents), which is about as blandly English as humanly possible, but apparently it's unusual enough that some people assume it must have an exotic pronunciation. "Hello, may I speak to Ma-HOE-ie?" "No."
ReplyDeleteGirl, listen. We are on the same page here. So, my name is Joshunda. Which, we know, looks a little like Joshua. Well, to some readers, it *is* joshua. Let's not even get into the pronunciation. Let's just say that 99.9% of the time, people's inclination is not to pronounce it the way it's actually said, which would be Ho-Shan-duh. Yes. Ho. To which people say all kinds of ignorant ass things. Unless they are grown ups and then they say, "That's beautiful."
ReplyDeleteBut I started writing under J. Victoria to avoid this problem, and sometimes as Joshunda Victoria Sanders in order to alert readers that I am not Mr. Sanders. And then a really great writer and reviewer referred to me as Victoria Saunders and all I could do was shake my head.
I am glad you wrote about this. I was wondering how many times you'd been called Rihanna in your life. Good god, people. DO BETTER.
I have a co-worker from Sudan. His name is Ngor. It is pronounced like the French word for the color black - noir. When he joined our company, it was the first time I noticed an effort for people to learn a name. They still can't pronounce our Bulgarian co-worker's last name. Small steps.
ReplyDeleteOh, I am SO with you on this one! Not only do I (often) get asked if my first name is my real name, but also people tend to mispronounce my last name no matter how many times I tell them the correct pronunciation. It drives me crazy because I deal with it on a daily basis in the classroom. I know the dg combination in the middle of my last name (Nordgren) tends to throw people off (well, Americans - Europeans always know how to pronounce it without me telling them), but you would think that once I've explained how to say it, it wouldn't be such an issue. It's TWO freakin' syllables people!!
ReplyDeleteI'm a Caroline and I pretty much despair of ever not being "Carolyn." Most polite people ask how to pronounce it (I don't think I'd have this problem if I lived in the UK. I don't understand why Americans have such an issue with it!), but there's one lady in my office who not only always calls me Carolyn, but she addresses me in emails as such EVEN WHEN SHE HAS TO SELECT CAROLINE IN THE ADDRESS BOX. AHHHHH. .. ... it's a losing battle, alas. And if I say it's Caroline "like the princess" I just get blank stares because apparently no one is familiar with the Grimaldis. :(
ReplyDeleteMy nom de guerre is Rubí because the first time I lived in Spain a dear friend's aged, deaf auntie heard my real name that way. Since I loved the auntie as much as I love my friend, I took it on as a badge of honor. But my real name is a lot more Anglo-Saxon and gender-neutral.
ReplyDeleteAs for learning other people's names, if I could learn two dozen or so Chinese and Korean students' names every semester, anything is possible!
My name is Catherine. I also go by Cat. It's amazing how many people will, after I've introduced myself as "Catherine" or "Cat," insist on calling me Cathy. Do not call me Cathy. It is not my name.
ReplyDeleteI also get Catherine mispronounced as "Cath-REEN" on an alarmingly frequent basis. And a lot of clients will respond to an email, which I have signed "Catherine," by calling me Caroline, Carol, Carolyn, Christine, Colleen, or whatever other "C" name they can think of. It is bizarre. I don't understand it. Neither Catherine nor Cat are difficult or uncommon names.
I am always careful to call people by the name with which they introduced themselves unless and until they ask me to call them by a nickname.
HI
ReplyDeleteRee-ANN-in.
My name is Rakisha. Pronounced Rah-KEY-sha. In my 40 years, I've gotten, Rashika, Rashida, Raquisha, and Rahquina. In college, I told everyone to call me by my nickname. I'm a Girl Scout leader now and my troop is full of duck-voiced mush-mouthed 5 and 6 year olds and I didn't want them to go into a seizure trying to say Ms. Rakisha, so they just call Ms. Kiki.For the adults, they must learn. In high school, I did yell at my dean when I was a senior. She asked me what bug was up my butt, I said: "You. For the last 4 years, you see me every day and say 'Hi Rashida.' I say 'Hi, Ms. Speaks but its Rakisha.' If you can't say my name right, don't speak to me."
#CallMeRantyMcRant
Thank you for this post. As you can tell, I really needed and loved it.