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Rachel J. Cox's avatar

You two need to stop worrying about "butchering" people's names, it's not offensive, at least it shouldn't be. If a French or German or Nigerian person pronounces your boring American names wrong, would you care? No. You can't possibly be expected to pronounce all the foreign names of the world.

And if someone has an unusual name that is commonly mispronounced even in their own home country, that is their parent's fault, not anyone else's. Baby naming 101.

Although, to be fair, Katie can't pronounce the name Leah correctly.

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Justin's avatar

I come from a bilingual place and the two native languages don't even pronounce my extremely simple and common name the same. People who take offense to this have almost universally been trained to do so.

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Bored Nihilist's avatar

My favorite example is Kmele Foster (of The Fifth Column) who said that his own mother doesn't even pronounce his name consistently.

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That TERF Owl's avatar

When we had twins my husband and they'd been called Baby A and Baby B for two days after their birth, he suggested he name one and I name the other (we had a list of names reflecting his home country in Eastern Europe). I named Baby B and he named Baby A.

I stumbled on Baby A's name for a while but finally nailed it (it's not hard to say but people put the accent on the wrong syllable). When we were new to the Episcopal Church we were attending (not going now) and we were talking to a woman who mispronounced Baby A's name, she looked up and said, with the confidence of Hermione Granger correcting Ron ("it's LeviOsa, not LeviosAA")... at age 5.

Anyways. I hadn't heard this anecdote from Kmele before & it's a good one!

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Alejandro Manevich 🧉's avatar

By the standards of Newton MA in the late 70s / early 80s, my name was exotic and unpronounceable. Still remember the sense of dread I felt whenever we'd have a substitute teacher taking attendance, and s/he would stop at my name and hesitate, before completely butchering it. (I started insisting on "Alex" pretty early on.) It never occurred to me to be offended though. What would be the point?

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LL's avatar

That is funny. I do not know how many Alejandros I went to school with.

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lucille bluth's avatar

My last name is both unpronounceable and extremely funny to English speakers. Teachers used to get to my name on the list and just call my first name because they didn't even want to try. Best not to let these things give you a persecution complex because they're really not all that important (or unusual)!

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Feb 24, 2023
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Bored Nihilist's avatar

100% my first thought, and imagining a 5 year old getting annoyed by that put a huge smile on my face.

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Bored Nihilist's avatar

I wonder if "woke" (and before that "PC") culture has infiltrated so much that people are literally afraid of mispronouncing a "foreign" name, that they preempt themselves from having to even attempt to say a person's name by saying something like, "I'm sure I'd mispronounce this, so I'll just ask you to say it/spell it"?

I can see how that could mostly be a middle class/PMC worry, but I could also see working/lower class people being afraid of running afoul of the norms of their "social betters".

(I was raised with a solidly middle class ethos, even though it was on a decidedly "blue collar" wage, and I cannot imagine not even being able to *attempt* to say, e.g. "Alejandro".)

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lucille bluth's avatar

It's a double standard as always because if you're white and your name is foreign in a funny way nobody gives a shit about butchering it, trust me! They'll do it gleefully and make lame jokes about it for weeks or even years after meeting you (I let people do this because I know they're enjoying themselves but at this point I've heard 'em all a million times). I have seen people do exactly what you describe for POC, though. It seems like a polite and respectful way to address the situation but the key is to not jump down someone's throat when they don't do that or don't get it right, because it genuinely doesn't fucking matter and most people are just trying their best.

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