Put an end to people mispronouncing your name

http://namez.com

by obvio • 12 years ago

122 138 12 years ago

namez.com

timsayshey• 12 years ago

Nice, reminds me of a Brian Regan sketch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQ8BoYEgy1I&t=4m11s

strozykowski2• 12 years ago

As a bearer of an apparently hard-to-pronounce name, this looks interesting, but I don't know that I would do this.

JoshTriplett• 12 years ago

If it's the same name as your HN username, I don't see any obvious way to mispronounce it, other than whether the first 'o' is long or short. Is that the bit people mispronounce?

Kluny• 12 years ago

I'm guessing any pronunciation errors are caused by people misreading it and skipping letters or adding extra ones.

vitd• 12 years ago

My Polish friends tell me that speaking in Polish "ow" is pronounced like the English word "off" (or maybe "of"? I forget) instead of the English word "ow". So "off-ski" or "uv-ski" instead of "ow-ski", at least for some of them.

anuleczka2• 12 years ago

Same here (Polish names unite!). I usually get embarrassed by the amount of attention mine will get. Using this tool feels like it would just add even more attention to it.

gnosek2• 12 years ago

My last name is actually simple to pronounce but I usually ask to "just call me Greg", as Grzegorz is probably the epitome of unpronounceable Polish names.

Still, I'm not sure if I'd ever use this tool. Seems somewhat pretentious, even if useful.

cezary• 12 years ago

Another -ski here. Sometimes there's room for varying pronunciations of the same name. I grew up pronouncing my last name the way my non-English speaking parents thought it should be pronounced in English. It wasn't until college that I realized there was an easier way to pronounce it.

reinhardt• 12 years ago

The ultimate challenge: Mihály Csíkszentmihályi.

minopret• 12 years ago

Pronounced "author of Flow"

hluska• 12 years ago

My last name looks hard to pronounce so I'd technically be their target, but unfortunately, I'm not sure that I'd actually set this up. Cool idea though!!

TheLoneWolfling• 12 years ago

I actually like that my name is hard to pronounce (as in: I have yet to hear someone pronounce it correctly without being told). It means that I instantly know when the person on the phone doesn't know me.

mattzito• 12 years ago

Yeah, I think it's a clever concept, but it seems almost egotistical to say, "Look, I care enough about how you pronounce my last name to embed a link in my email sig"

Many people classically mispronounced my name - it's not a big deal, I move on. If we're not going to be having many conversations where you say my last name, I'm not even going to correct you.

CocaKoala9• 12 years ago

I dunno; as somebody who's name gets mispronounced essentially all the time, I'm pretty sensitive about trying to pronounce other people's names properly. If they embed the pronunciation in their email, then a) I don't have to ask, and b) I can practice on my own time with a reference to make sure I have it correct. It's nice of them.

x1798DE3• 12 years ago

Yeah, I actually don't care if people mispronounce my name at all, but I really dislike mispronouncing other peoples' names, and I also really dislike putting other people in the position to struggle with the pronunciation, then if they get it wrong, I'm in the awkward position of either correcting them and causing them to feel bad about something I don't care about or (for people with whom I will be having an ongoing relationship), let them continue mispronouncing my name until they hear someone else (potentially me), pronounce it correctly (potentially making them feel even worse for all the times they made the mistake). It would certainly be nice to have a database of names and pronunciations.

That said, this does not seem like an ideal solution to me, because it sorta has some of the same problems that just telling people how your name is pronounced has - makes it seem like a bigger deal than it actually is, possibly won't work anyway, etc. Name pronunciation is probably just a bad situation in general.

pavel_lishin2• 12 years ago

My name gets mispronounced, too, and I'm fine with it - I actually prefer the incorrectly pronounced version of my name.

It has taught me, though, that when someone tells you "you can just call me X", you should not keep asking them how to really pronounce their name. If you're an American, you are not going to be able to fluently pronounce some non-Indo-European names. It's downright rude to quiz people for minutes on end as to how their name is "really" pronounced. If you don't get it on the second try, just go with what they're comfortable with.

JensenDied• 12 years ago

I have a different problem, my name Jensen generally gets said correctly but people looking at the spelling of my name get it wrong (Jenson / Jason) quite frequently.

This is primarily an issue with new contacts / acquaintances which I'm sure looks poorly on both of us, especially when this gets sent to other people on job searches etc.

dllthomas3• 12 years ago

I agree with CocaKoala - it is not about making people say my name right; it is about avoiding making people uncomfortable, which is considerate. You do raise a good point that one has to be careful with the presentation, though.

Walkman2• 12 years ago

Maybe your last name is not 'Kiss' (which has nothing to do with the english word kiss and pronounced as /kiːʃʃ/) and people never thought your first name is some kind of sexy word and started sending you kisses at inappropriate places :D It started to get really annoying!

lotharbot• 12 years ago

It's common for media to be given pronunciation guides for names they might need to say at events they're covering (sports, politics, you name it.)

It's nice when people care enough about how their name is pronounced that they give you the tools to do it correctly.

andremat• 12 years ago

Remembers me of "How do you pronounce 'Bjarne Stroustrup?'": http://www.stroustrup.com/pronounciation.wav

commandar• 12 years ago

"Hello, this is Linus Torvalds, and I pronounce Linux as Linux."

ternaryoperator• 12 years ago

"Hello, this is Richard Stallman and I pronounce Linux as GNU/Linux."

mariusz793• 12 years ago

My problem is not with people mispronouncing my name but modifying it to something easier for them.. No you may not call me Mario, or Martin. Mispronounce it! I don't care, just don't change it to something different!

PeterGriffin8• 12 years ago

Or you can adopt a short nickname everyone can say right, and put the entire problem behind you.

There are more important things in this short life. A name is just a bunch of random sounds so when someone talks, you know they mean you.

oblio• 12 years ago

His name is probably "Marius". That's about as short as it gets as a name...

mariusz793• 12 years ago

Great idea "Paul" but the problem is not with the length of the name or difficulty, but with the fact that people I just met are trying to assign me a name I may not like.

sophacles• 12 years ago

One thing this solves is the pronunciation of odd spellings of names, and to an extent, names that are foreign to the recipient (e.g. to an anglophone many eastern European and Asian names don't have an immediately decipherable pronunciation from spelling).

However, one of the problems it doesn't help with, is that different languages and language families have sounds that are not used in other languages. This means people will still get your name wrong, because they don't necessarily know how to make those sounds, nor do they even know how to hear the subtle distinctions - e.g. the classic r/l confusion, or my own inability to get tones right when trying to learn mandarin words/phrases.

I guess what I'm saying is I don't think anyone should expect this to suddenly make everyone pronounce their name perfectly all of a sudden.

taejo2• 12 years ago

People with such names might adapt them to be pronounceable (I do: my name has an English vowel which doesn't exist in German, and I introduce myself with a German approximation when I'm speaking German). But even the pronounceable version might not have an obvious correspondence with the written name. For example Nguyen might be happy being called [wɪn] rather than [ŋʷĩəŋ], but many English speakers will say something like ['guyɪn].

pessimizer• 12 years ago

I've liked the way some people have mispronounced my name. Answering to a mispronounced name feels like wearing a wig to me; it's fun, and it makes me feel more exotic than I am.

stefanu• 12 years ago

There is one advantage in people mispronouncing your name though. In my experience, people within a group tend to converge towards one pronunciation or variation of your name. On a random encounter in public or out-of-the group environment, if someone is addressing you, you know which group he/she is from, based on the pronunciation he/she used.

momodomo• 12 years ago

Sounds like a good way to solve a corner case in speech recognition: speech to text for names. In reverse, it could also improve speech synthesis for personal robots that would speak the names of their users.

xienze2• 12 years ago

Mispronouncing someone's name is understandable. What gets me is people misspelling my name... after they've worked with me for years... and seen my name hundreds of times...

robalfonso• 12 years ago

I'm glad to know I'm not the only one. My last name is not hard to pronounce but if you haven't seen it you can pick 3/4 ways to spell it...but if I've worked with you for years and my email is firstinitial.lastname@ it drives me kind of crazy when I see people misspelling it.

icambron2• 12 years ago

My first name get misspelled more commonly than it's spelled correctly. I don't mind that so much from a personal relationships standpoint (it's not an intuitive spelling), but it's caused me real issues. The pharmacy had my name misspelled such that I couldn't fill proscriptions and it was really hard to fix. My ISP spelled it wrong when creating my account. The list goes on. And my name even has the "standard" spelling; I can't imagine what happens to people who don't.

x1798DE3• 12 years ago

I'm even very forgiving of this. In America, I feel like every name has a few different variants, especially anything that had to be transliterated from another character set (even the German name Müller comes through sometimes as Mueller and sometimes as Muller). Because they're so often some Anglicized version of some foreign name, it's hard to have an intuition about the right way to spell many names - even something simple like Goldman vs. Goldmann, Green vs. Greene. I imagine that most people store a name in their brain as how they pronounce it, plus some hint about the spelling if they've been burned before ("Hmm... I remember there's a silent j in there somewhere, but where...").

Names are tough in our wonderful melting pot, but it's a small price to pay for having every kind of ethnic food available in all our major cities (and in many of our minor ones).

xienze2• 12 years ago

Well, in my case, my first name is fairly common, it just has a letter repeated that normally isn't. So, it's not some unusual, foreign name.

thomson• 12 years ago

My name is Thomson, and I've set up the following aliases for my gmail (in decreasing order of traffic): thompson, thomas, tom, thom (my dad's name). I get an e-mail at least twice a week.

spc476• 12 years ago

What gets me is when someone misspells my name in email. When my name, spelled correctly, is sitting there in the To: header.

jules• 12 years ago

Americans usually can't pronounce my name when they read it, they can't spell my name when they hear it, and they predict the opposite gender. Interestingly, Brits, even though they speak the same language, usually get everything right.

mariocesar• 12 years ago

How HN users will pronounce my full name: Mario César Señoranis ?

Some suggest that this feels pretentious to suggest the correct pronunciation, however I always research the correct pronunciation for all persons I'm presented. From my side I like it, is a courtesy, is about good manners.

Not getting mad about someone mispronounce your name is courteous as research the correct pronunciation for others name

HorizonXP2• 12 years ago

I will never expect anyone to pronounce my legal first name, Xitij.

johngalt2• 12 years ago

Zih-tidge is my guess.

nly• 12 years ago

I'd guess zeetee, silent J

HorizonXP2• 12 years ago

Close. Kshee-teej, where the 't' is a soft 't' sound, almost like in the word 'thumb'. Hard to explain since English doesn't make distinctions between how consonants can sound.

jib• 12 years ago

I mispronounce my own name most of the time. When I'm speaking English (which is 99% of the time I guess) I just use the English pronounciation, because it is easier, and who cares, really?

MatthewWilkes• 12 years ago

I used to do this when living abroad. I always liked it, it reminded me of how arbitrary names and borders are whenever I used it.

gsharma• 12 years ago

Here is something similar, but it uses text rather than voice and only has Indian names so far. http://www.howdoyousaythatagain.com/

lifeformed• 12 years ago

I like this kind of project. Small in scope, quick to understand, attention-getting. It seems like a fun thing to make.

johngalt2• 12 years ago

Honestly this seems really pretentious.

My last name is almost impossible. Even people who know me tend to just abbreviate it. Whenever I meet someone new who stumbles over my name. I just smile and say 'Don't worry about it, I said it wrong the first time too.' Then give the correct pronunciation. It's a good way to break the ice.

Conversely sending someone a link on how to correctly pronounce your name just screams 'I'm impossible to get along with'.

stevekemp• 12 years ago

My wife changed her name on marriage at least partially because her surname (Finnish) is hard to pronounce for random people here in the UK.

(She's a doctor so she'd has to introduce herself with it on a constant basis to patients - "Hello I'm Dr. Xxxx" - Now she has a surname that is easy to pronounce and a forename people often get wrong.)

quarterwave• 12 years ago

Several languages use compound nouns, proper and common. These cause pronunciation problems when the phrase is read atomically, instead of by parsing. For example, German armbunduhr is easily understood as arm+bund+uhr = clock around arm, or wrist watch. Since I speak languages that also build up compound nouns (e.g; chair = four+legs), I have no trouble recognizing the need to parse in other languages.

koesterd• 12 years ago

It's Armbanduhr, though. So it's more like Armband (wristband) and Uhr (clock). But your solution is at least equally clever! I never thought of that.

nat• 12 years ago

I don't think this will help as much as they hope it will. In my experience, people are generally incapable of pronouncing anything, even when it is said to their face.

My name is Nat, which is about as simple a name as you could ask for. But quite often, I will introduce myself, "Hi, I'm Nat", and the response will be "Nice to meet you, Nate". My wife experiences it too (even from her mother!), so I don't think my pronunciation is the problem here.

Is this kind of vowel sloppiness more common in the US? Or should I just take the hint and change my name?

shazow• 12 years ago

Or even worse: When a barista takes my name for my order, I say "Andrey." Usually they'll spell it "Andre" but whatever.

Five minutes later, more often than not, they call out "Aubrey." That's reading their own handwriting.

You can't explain that.

CocaKoala9• 12 years ago

Yeah, names in coffeeshops is an entirely separate issue; trying to hear a name when there's a lot of background noise and a hard time limit before it becomes awkward and other customers get angry about the line being held up is pretty rough.

I've actually taken to giving them my full legal first name as opposed to the nickname I usually go by, because the nickname is phonetically ambiguous and the full name isn't.

CodeMage• 12 years ago

It can get worse than that ;)

I originally come from Serbia, but I spent the last 14 years in Chile, where most people seemed to choke on my name: Vojislav. When pronounced correctly, it's "voice love", but nobody outside the territory of ex-Yugoslavia knows how to read it correctly.

When it came to buying coffee and stuff like that, I had the choice of explaining my name ad nauseum or adopting an easier one. I decided to call myself "Boris", thanks to telemarketers who would recover from my name by changing it to something they could deal with ;-)

Anyway, that worked quite fine for years and years, until it started failing, ironically at the Starbucks inside a mall with the highest concentration of tourists and immigrants. I would say "Boris" and two times out of five they would write down "Maurice".

The cherry on top inevitable came five minutes later, when a different barista would call out "Mauricio".

Fortunately, I moved before I gave in to temptation to do what a friend of mine did on a regular basis: give "Spongebob" as his name :P

ahomescu1• 12 years ago

Worst I've got was "Avery" (instead of Andrei).

keerthiko• 12 years ago

There's a conspiracy theory that Starbucks and other large cafe chains intentionally misspell names, so that the customer will take a picture and facebook/instagram it, as free advertising for the place.

If it isn't true, it certainly should be. If I opened a coffee shop tomorrow, I would instruct all my baristas to misspell the customer names for this reason.

obvio• 12 years ago

I just use a pseudonym which is unmistakable, usually a really local name that even though my accent isn't perfect they'll be able to understand it!

smackfu2• 12 years ago

I think it's pretty interesting. If I write both those names in cursive, they look surprisingly similar.

Fuzzwah• 12 years ago

I'm an Aussie living in the US. My name is Rob. Basically every American calls me Raaaab.

danoprey• 12 years ago

I'm British and in the US I have to deliberately say "Daaayn" so as not to be called Don.

icambron2• 12 years ago

I'm guessing they just thought they misheard it, since "Nate" is so much more common than "Nat".

kijin2• 12 years ago

In general, sloppy pronunciation is more common in countries where most people have little to no contact with anyone who speaks a different language. In order to learn that your vowels are not the only vowels that exist, you need to encounter people who use different vowels, and this needs to start at a very young age when your brain can still pick up the difference.

I recently talked to an Asian man who couldn't hear any difference between "R" and "L", let alone pronounce them. That's what happens when you only speak and hear a single language for decades. Your brain gets wired to ignore any variation that isn't significant in your own language. My "L" really sounds like "R" to him, and your name really sounds like "Nate" to a lot of Americans.

Hopefully, the increasing influx of Spanish and Chinese speakers into the U.S. will force Americans to hear other languages more often in their daily lives.

dllthomas3• 12 years ago

Not just "a different language" but "the relevant language (or something close enough to have the same phonemes)".

smickie• 12 years ago

We're the UK-side of the office and we have guy called Craig. (Rhymes with plague/vague.)

All of the USA-side pronounce it Krr-egg. Even after I've explained the difference to a group of them, it still goes back to Krr-egg after a week.

I'm Sean, which American's don't have a problem with at all, but I if I had a bitcoin for every-time I was called 'seen' in the UK...

icegreentea• 12 years ago

It's funny (and I think points to why they keep going back to Krr-egg), that in the accent I speak (standard Canadian... so something of an average), 'Krr-egg' totally rhymes with plague (play-egg) and vague (vay-egg).

vitoreiji• 12 years ago

It's remarkable that I still don't know if I should pronounce "names" or "name-zee".

jmillikin• 12 years ago

I assume it's nah-mez, rhyming with the name Ramez.

onedognight• 12 years ago

This reminds me of the old recording from Linus[0].

"Hello, this is Linus Torvalds, and I pronounce Linux as Linux!"

Does he still pronounce it this way?

[0] http://www.paul.sladen.org/pronunciation/torvalds-says-linux...

dctoedt• 12 years ago

About a year ago (or so), I added a parenthetical, (My last name is pronounced "Tate"), to my business cards and email sig block. I've had several people comment approvingly.

That said, I do wish my German ancestors had changed either the spelling or the pronunciation when they came to the U.S. in the 19th century. I didn't do it myself when I was younger for fear of family disapproval, and by now my professional "brand" is under the existing spelling. Interestingly, my son, who's just starting his career, brushes off my suggestion that he change the spelling.

philwelch3• 12 years ago

Toedt (Tödt?), if my German pronunciation is correct, isn't exactly "Tate" either. But it's close enough for English.

joesmo• 12 years ago

This assumes that, given the right pronunciation, people will be able to pronounce your name correctly. That's just not reality. I've corrected many a person many a time only to have them repeat the same pronunciation back to me as they did before I corrected them two seconds ago. Finally, I just gave up.

Now I have two first names.

EDIT: Also happens a lot on voicemails, seconds after they've clearly heard my first name pronounced (the last name I don't mind much as it is unusual).

lomnakkus• 12 years ago

Hah! I have a name which I have literally never heard a non-native speaker (of my first language) pronounce correctly.

As far as I understand it, the problem isn't so much that people haven't heard you pronounce your own name, it's more to do with the fact(?) that -- unless they've been raised in a similar "sound-environment" -- they literally cannot hear the subtleties of the pronunciation (e.g. tongue/lip positioning, etc.). I've had this experience (in reverse) when trying to pronounce Chinese and Arabic which have subleties which are very foreign to my native language.

Walkman2• 12 years ago

This is just pure genius! I have been fighting with people for a long time pronouncing my name. Now, I just put a signature and I'm done explaining!

gravity13• 12 years ago

War-hole, like holes. Andy War-hole.

laurentoget• 12 years ago

If you are that sensitive to people pronouncing your name correctly and your name is not bob or chris, leaving the US is probably your best bet.

I certainly gave up long ago.

ibrad• 12 years ago

My name is simple enough to be pronounced by anyone, at least that's what I thought. Then I realize in the US people had a hardtime remembering it because for them it is unusual.

Now I try to pronounce it the American way just so my name isn't the center of the conversation. I get surprised when I make a mistake and tell someone the correct way of pronouncing it and they get right the first time.

adnam• 12 years ago

Despite this, I live in a country where my surname is impossible to pronounce correctly.

jakub_g• 12 years ago

Orthogonal note: when in doubt how to pronounce someone's name, you can use IVONA Text-to-Speech [1] if you know the origin, or Google Translate for pronunciation (GT often can infer the language but this can be misleading).

[1] http://www.ivona.com/en/

kyro• 12 years ago

Pretty clever idea. My 4-letter nickname, Kyro, gets mispronounced 10 out of 10 times. It's pronounced kero, like hero, but most pronounce it kairo. At first it was irritating, but I later realized it was a great conversation starter. "Kairo, where are you from?" "Egypt" "Haha, like Cairo! Have you been?"

Happy it worked out that way...

smackfu2• 12 years ago

I have an Irish "Mc" prefix name. There's a 50/50 chance someone will pronounce it with the wrong stress, and there is no "correct" way. Just tradition. So that's fun. I don't think this service would help though, since people think they know how to pronounce it.

http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/73900/when-does-t...

batmansbelt• 12 years ago

Hilarious. I was wondering how to pronounce Dusan this morning and couldn't find out on You Tube.

http://namez.com/search?q=dusan

golden_apples• 12 years ago

This is a really nice idea. I was working on a similar project a few years, audioname.com. The trick is in networking with larger social service and building integrations so that people can share their name's pronunciation everywhere that their name is shared, which is unfortunately fragmented across the web at the moment.

It would be nice to be able to highlight a name, search for it in this database, and play an audio file from a browser extension, for example. Or from an email client, or a linkedin profile, or wherever. Having to visit this site to look up a name is enough of a barrier that once the novelty wears off, I can't see it being too well used.

Udo• 12 years ago

It's impossible for an English speaker to pronounce my last name, whether they heard it before or not. Heck, I can't even pronounce it myself without falling back into German speech mode.

But what's more important: it really doesn't matter to me how you pronounce it. Do people care about it that much?

NoMoreNicksLeft• 12 years ago

Names have power. Why would I want anyone to be able to summon me so easily?

AdamGrey• 12 years ago

Like everything, this will take a bit of time. Recording your name, attaching to your email signature and allowing people to hear it a few times, in their own comfort and on their own time, will help them to get it eventually. Once everyone will have their name recorded, it will raise the issue and get people to make an effort and realize it is important. Now, there is only nothing, so...

krupan• 12 years ago

I looked at the Croatian soccer team (since I lived there for a while and speak a bit of the language) and I was disappointed you have the Americanized spellings for the names. For example, it's Ivan Perišić, not Ivan Perisic :-)

Jemaclus• 12 years ago

I once went to church with a friend of mine for six weeks, because he was shy and didn't want to go to church by himself. We get there, and this woman walks up to me.

Her: "What's your name?

Me: "Brian"

Her: "Brett! Nice to meet you, Brett. What's your last name, Brett?"

Me: "(my last name)"

Her: "Well, it is SO nice to meet you, Brett Psycho."

I was too flabbergasted to respond properly. Even worse, we had the exact same conversation each week for the next six weeks. She couldn't even be bothered to remember my discombobulated name.

ludamad• 12 years ago

I'm noticing some incorrect pronunciations here searching Polish names. At least one Englishy 'W' and some that sound lot more bizarre than they should due to recording issues. Any way to flag these?

a3_nm• 12 years ago

I agree that it is strange that we always provide the written form of a name although you cannot unambiguously determine its pronunciation from it (classical take on this: http://youtu.be/tyQvjKqXA0Y#t=0m19). Still, it sounds a bit over the top to have a service dedicated to the purpose of giving links to pronunciations of names.

I just provide the IPA for my name on my website, based on the unrealistic assumption that people who need to will read it.

arafalov• 12 years ago

I had that as an idea for podcasts. Similar, but different I guess and now the podcasts are mostly gone. http://blog.outerthoughts.com/2011/06/say-your-name-idea-for...

Article also links to couple of previous services doing similar things (back then). Let's hope this one is more successful.

nailer2• 12 years ago

Actual feedback: clicking the signature didn't make any noise on iPad.

restalis2• 12 years ago

I read here comments about personal experiences with mispronounced names and how this is looked upon as having little or no importance. I'm shocked. The name is the first and foremost part of one's identity. Why would it be acceptable to be corrupted for someone's convenience? It's like "...look, I don't fancy your name much, so I shall call you [...]! It's fine with you, right?" I may keep quiet in response, for not having much control over how I'm being called, but no - it is not and it should not be "fine". It's just about the first modicum of mutual respect as interlocutors.

The world gets globalized, so please -- when come in contact with the folks living outside your courtyard, be prepared to accept at least some small self-change as consequence.

goldenkey• 12 years ago

If someone gets your name wrong , you correct them if you care. It's only disrespect if that person continues to mispronounce your name. And even in that case, the person may have a mental factuality defect and mean no malice. This site is ridiculous and so is your justification. Being stern about your name is such an egotistical attitude

restalis2• 12 years ago

It's only disrespect if that person continues to mispronounce your name.

I agree. When I present myself, I pronounce my name. Most of the time people people just follow and it feels like a courtesy at best, but there are cases when there's this attitude of entitlement to rename you, and that you are the one that should follow.

the person may have a mental factuality defect and mean no malice.

I haven't suggested to be necessarily malice from the mispronouncers. It may be lack of... many things that become desirable in a globalized society.

This site is ridiculous and so is your justification. Being stern about your name is such an egotistical attitude

The site may be ridiculous, but the problem it tries to address feels real to me. You may not perceive it to be a problem because either you haven't a name that can be easily contorted, or because you have different values in your life. I care about my name and I only ask the same care from others, the same way I try my best to reciprocate that kind of respect when I'm being asked.

forgottenpass• 12 years ago

Why would it be acceptable to be corrupted for someone's convenience?

It's for my convenience too. People have been getting my first name wrong for my entire life. It's easier just to let it go, or when the situation allows just use a fake name. I have to pick my battles, this one is often a fruitless waste of energy. The number of people I care get it right is a small circle.

olive_• 12 years ago

It is also good for learning pronunciations of names of the famous people. I like it.

Put an end to people mispronouncing your name

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