Have you ever had someone say your name wrong? Does it happen often or just on occasion? I’d prefer not to say my actual name on here, but many people started saying my name wrong thanks to a certain Disney princess movie...
Alright, so basically, I've come to accept that when I meet someone new and they try to pronounce my name, they mostly always get it wrong. I've gotten used to correcting people. It also happens when people spell my name.
My last name is an uncommon German name, so people ask me how it’s spelled and pronounced whenever it’s brought up. When I asked my grandparents about it, I found out I butchered the name a little as well. At least my first name Benjamin is common.
My name is very common and easy to pronounce, and yet one of my teachers managed to get in wrong. As for my last name, literally every non-Chinese person (understandably) pronounces it wrong.
Not necessarily a wrong pronunciation but more like a getting the messed up with another person. This happens to me and my older brother. Before I said why our name got messed up, I and my brother are NOT twins. That means we DON'T look very similar to each other. Okay, my brother and I have a very closely resemble name and only one word is different(Keep in mind that I live in Hong Kong and often have 3 worded name due to Chinese traditions) So, when my mom calls me, she often called my brother's name instead of mine, and vice versa. I know she is not intentionally doing this and it just funny that she can call my brother even if he is not around.
My first name isn't normally screwed up, but my last name...man, you would not believe how many people don't know how to say my last name. Most of the time people don't even try to say it. They just say 'Oli...Oli...' and we have to speak up and say 'it's such-and-such, and yeah, that's me'. Sometimes though, people actually do mess up the name. My favorite butchering of the name though was when someone said 'opulent', which is an actual word that means rich or luxurious. Like, yeah, no, that's definitely not it. That's not even close. It's like you're not even trying. My dad has an interesting name mix up story, though it's not exactly because of poor pronunciation. It just to happens that my Dad's middle name and last name sound similar to each other, and this completely threw off this one guy, so for some reason he decided that it made much more sense for my dad's middle name to be something else, so he just changed it for the sake of this one silly thing. So now, on this one silly thing, it says my dad's middle name is Eugene. Like, they literally just made that up.
My first name is a bit of a toss up, sometimes people get it wrong and sometimes they don't, but a lot of the time people ask to call me by a nickname. Any time people try to spell my name, they usually get it wrong though. People pretty much always pronounce my last name wrong, because it's spelled similarly to another word, but pronounced differently.
My maiden name was awful for people to say, for the same reason as Web. I tried making up an easier way to say it, but even that took time. And just forget about spelling it right. Not only is it not spelled in its original German, but it looks terrible to pronounce. Thankfully my married name is a LOT easier to say. It's also shorter too, so people have less trouble with it. I have never really made a nasty snit about the way people say my last name, so it hasn't become much of a problem. I just wish that more people would be accepting if I get their last or first names wrong. Quite a few customers are nice enough when it comes to messing up their name, but some of them get really upset about it and it can get pretty annoying. I understand it is who you are, but at the same time, it doesn't hurt anyone to say your name wrong, especially if they can easily correct themselves.
My real name isn't one that people mess up the pronunciation very often. I sometimes get people calling me by another very similar name, but usually people get it on the first try. Now what people almost always tend to mispronounce is my screen name SyWry. I am not surprised that people mispronounce this name. I designed it to be exotic and thus rather hard to pronounce on first try. Its pronounced Si-rye (like rye bread), but half the people I meet pronounce it like Si-reeeeee and the other half, See-ree. When I hear someone say that it urks me in a bad way. Whenever someone does mispronounce my name I prefer to just tell them to call me Sy since its easier and I don't have to hear the reeeeeeeeeeeee.
The problem with foreigners' pronounciation of my name (and many other names & placenames here in the Philippines, actually the language too) is the wrong stress and pronouncing vowels like they're English, when they're supposed to be pronounced like they're Spanish... That's why my name is pronounced 'leg man' by others...
Oh, let’s not even get started with my last name. It’s short, but so many people say it wrong. (It’s really hard to explain without saying it, but again, privacy) So basically, it’s supposed to sound like “plague”, but many people mistake it for sounding like “page”. And I’ve also seen people spell it with an extra letter, including one of the teachers at my school (the school that my father works at). Really, my dad is a fellow teacher and you can’t spell it right? It’s a 4-lettered last name. Just 4 letters!
I've had people pronounce my name as Brad-ee instead of Braid-ee, which I find odd considering that most people should know how to pronounce Brady considering that most people have at least hear of The Brady Bunch and there are several famous people that have it as their last name. Although its generally not too much of an issue, compared to people just flat out calling me by the wrong name. Brad, Bradley, Brandon and even Brian are all popular but I'm pretty sure that I've been called just about every name starting with a B and sometimes people don't even get that right.
