Who Here Has a Foreign-Sounding Name and How Do You Deal With It?

wuliheron

I've often thought I may have been lucky my ancestors were illiterate because there's no telling what name I would have been stuck with. With my warped sense of humor though I still get a kick out of people asking me if I'm Chinese. I'm 6'2" with green eyes and brown hair, though I do have a yellowish color thanks to some Native American blood. :)

Jimmy Snyder

My last name is spelled as in Dutch, but my family came from Belarus. I don't like it when people pronounce it Schneider, but actually, that's what it was. Many people spell it Synder and that causes no end of problems.

BobG

Don't even get me started on first names! It drives me crazy when people pronounce my name backwards!

gmax137

I was going to suggest this. As a native English speaker, I sometimes have embarrassing difficulty with "foreign" names. This leads to discomfort on my part and I have learned over the years to ask and ask again, to make sure I get the pronunciation right. It's more embarrassing to say it wrong or avoid saying it, than to ask a few times. It is easier when there's fewer people around.

fluidistic

My last name is composed of 2 names, 1 Irish, 1 arabic so that it's foreign everywhere I could possibly go unless I would live like Julian Assange in embassies.
This is still causing me troubles; since in France duing the epoch of when I was born it seems it was not possible to have the last name of your mother, they only took the last name of my father and put the name of my mother as "use" name. So that now my name in Canada (where I was born) is different from my name in France (where I lived most of my life) and now in Argentina I basically use both names, sigh.
If one day I have a child, I'll give him/her only 1 last name for sure. Lots of troubles.

zoobyshoe

I used to know a guy named "Bob" and, apparently, I always pronounced it backward without realizing it because one day he lost his temper and shouted, "IT'S 'BOB'! NOT 'BOB'!" I was so embarrassed and felt like a complete idiot for not noticing my error all that time.

trueo

You do sound really foreign to think about it too. Perhaps because you are a farmer or a far far land cowboy

arildno

An acquaintance of mine decided he wouldn't bother with helpless Englishmen who couldn't pronounce his name properly, so he ysed to introduce himself with:
"Hi! My name is Are, but you can call me Tom!"

lisab

Monique

Then you misspell your own name? If it were spelled as in Dutch it would be "Snijder"

Ben Niehoff

Is Arild a Norwegian form of Harold? Or something entirely different?

George Jones

I can't pronounce my own name correctly, let alone names of others.

arildno

Yes.
A slightly more common form (about 10.000 versus 8000) is Harald.

Yanick

My first name is Russian or Polish although it is pretty much pronounced like John with a Y instead of the J. That throws lots of people for a loop. If I make reservations for anything, I'll just use John because it saves time and effort.

Both my wife and our dog have very American names and my Russian family has lots of difficulty with both.

Living in a place like NY, it really doesn't even bother me anymore. It was slightly irritating when I was a kid and had to correct every teacher for a good couple of weeks at the start of every class. By High School I would correct them for the first week or so, then I wouldn't even bother.

But over all I'm so used to meeting people with "foreign" names that those are typically the only people whose names I can remember. After meeting 30-50 John's, Jack's and Anthony's in my life; when I hear a name like that it goes in 1 ear and out the other.

Curious3141

"Bob"? Well, Rowan Atkinson helped me understand your problem.