How Do You Say That?
Posted by Arwen Mosher in Family on Thursday, September 24, 2009 6:23 PM
This time of year brings my school memories rushing back.
There were a lot things I loved about being in school, especially in college. I miss many of them. I do not, however, miss the job that comes to me and all the unusually-named whenever we are in new situations: explaining to a fresh crop of people how to pronounce our names.
I was in school before the Lord of the Rings movies came out, so most people had never heard of the name Arwen. When my parents chose it for me, I imagine they thought the pronunciation was pretty intuitive. Not so much. My name has been butchered more ways than I can count. The most common mispronunciations are “AIR-wen” and, oddly, “Erin.” I’ve always wondered if those who pronounced it that way were actually just misreading and thought my parents had given me the boys’ name Aaron.
My guidance counselor called me Erin for fully three of the four years of my high school career. He was not a particularly detail-oriented man, but still.
Of course, it’s not just the unusually-named among us who are prone to having our names mispronounced. I’ve certainly heard subsitute teachers call girls named Rachel, “Rah-SHELL,” and girls named Danielle, “Daniel.”
And it’s not only first names that get mispronounced. As someone who has spent my whole life saying, “It’s pronounced ARE-wen,” I was grateful that my last name as a child was Thomas, an easy one. Marrying a Mosher (MOE-zhur) was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made, but the non-intuitive pronunciation makes life more complicated.
On the other hand, when I pick up the phone and someone asks for “AIR-wen MAW-sher” I can immediately identify a telemarketer. Very convenient.
Weirdly, although I don’t necessarily enjoy having to tell people how to pronounce my name, when it came time to pick names for my own children I found that “easy to pronounce” was not a top priority for me. I’m not scarred by having to explain my name, and I love its uniqueness.
And anyway, there are no guarantees in life. I was sure Camilla’s name would cause no pronunciation problems, yet she regularly gets called “Ca-MILL-ya.” I thought Blaise would be a trickier one, but in eight months I haven’t heard his name (which we say as “BLAYS”) misprounced yet.
Is your name regularly mispronounced? Does it bother you? And is ease of pronunciation a priority for you in naming your children?
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