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.
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.
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.
I agree, but I'll add that a minor variant of that "you can call me either X or Y" is really annoying, because in my experience "it doesn't matter to me" is almost never actually true. I see this a lot with students; they think they're doing me a favour by giving me a choice, but they do prefer one of them, and their friends call them one of them, and I end up looking like an asshole for using some other form of their name.
To avoid the appearance of that, it would be nice if instead of "you can just call me X"---which sounds like it's your less-preferred alternative, your second choice, so obviously someone's going to try for the other one---you said "please call me X" or "I prefer if you call me X". Then everybody wins! :)
Yet to encounter a monolingual English speaker to be able to pronounce my first name "Ward" (Dutch speaking Belgian). Only one I know of was someone who had spent several years in Paris (so he knew French and wasn't actually in the monolingual category anymore).
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.
Yeah, for sure this is probably not the be-all-end-all solution to the problem of mispronounced names; I'm guessing that it's trying to be the email equivalent of introducing yourself (and thus providing the proper pronunciation so people have it), but it's not quite the seamless marriage of sound and text that I think people are hoping for.
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.
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.
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!
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?
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
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.
Very clever. I have seen a similar idea used where people gossip loudly in a public place saying nice things about the person they want to ingratiate themselves with who is not present but who can overhear.
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.
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.
Any language is better than none. It's much easier for someone who is familiar with two languages to learn the basics of a third language, than it is for someone who has only ever spoken one language to learn the basics of a second language (his first foreign language).
Possibly. I just know that learning Polish, it is being hard for me to distinguish sounds despite speaking various amounts of Spanish, Japanese, German, Hebrew, and Bahasa Indonesia at various points in my life.
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).
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.
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.
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
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.
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!
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.
It's a great name, but it has three syllables and is uncommon enough for people to wonder if they should pronounce the "s" as he himself demonstrated.
There's a reason you know William Gates and William Clinton as Bill Gates and Bill Clinton. Richard Cheney knows short name is so important, he'd rather be called "Dick" rather than his full name, "Richard".
It's pretty easy to imagine that somebody might get attached to their given name; maybe they were named for their grandparent, of whom they have a lot of fond memories. Maybe it's a connection to their family that they really cherish. Maybe they just really like the way their full name flows together. Suggesting that somebody "just change" their name to something that's only vaguely related because "it's just a collection of random syllables" seems to kind of miss the point of a name.
The point of a name is so that people have an easy way to refer to you; so what? The point of anything is purely utilitarian, and people still get attached to them. I got a cat so that I wouldn't feel as lonely when my housemates went on long trips; that doesn't mean that after taking care of her for four years I'd be happy swapping my cat for a different one, even though they might be functionally identical as far as cats go.
People get attached to cars, books, CDs, photos, musical instruments, and all manner of things. A name is honestly one of the least-weird things to form an attachment to. The point is, that's not the only point to a name.
Please don't compare one's attachment to another living being (like a cat) to attachment to objects, or even worse, intangible symbols (like a name).
A tendency to apply high value to symbols, instead of substance is a property I've noticed in less sophisticated people. They can't tell (or weren't taught to tell) apart symbol and substance, but symbols are way simpler, so they focus on the symbols.
Works for them to a degree. But it's stupid. Symbols exist only point to something else. Maybe being named after your grandfather means a lot to you as a symbol, but no one else feels that way. To them it's just your name.
And one is not honoring their grandfather by being particularly stubborn about their weird name, they're just being silly, and harming themselves.
You honor those you respect through your actions, not by wearing hollow badges (like using a specific name). By the way, I was named after my grandfather.
>A tendency to apply high value to symbols, instead of substance is a property I've noticed in less sophisticated people.
This is a wonderful sentence. I recently got married, and I wouldn't trade my wedding ring for ten times the gold value in cash, because I cherish it as a symbol of my commitment to my wife, and a symbol of our love for each other. Does that make me "less sophisticated" than somebody who looks at their wedding ring and says "Gold prices are up from when we got married; let's cash this sucker in and make some profit"?
Am I stupid for not doing that? Is it silly that I cherish my wedding ring more than somebody on the street, because to me it's a symbol of my marriage and to them it's just my ring?
It's fine if you want to adopt an utterly robotic and value-driven outlook on life, but it's silly to expect everybody else to do the same, and it's ridiculous to say that people who refuse to be similarly robotic are somehow "less sophisticated" than your utterly logical and enlightened self.
edit: you keep on pointing out how you do X, like how you've shortened your name, or you were named for your grandfather, and I guess I don't understand why because it doesn't matter. What you choose to do doesn't have that much of a bearing on what other people choose to do, and just because you're willing to change your name doesn't mean other people should have to.
> Does that make me "less sophisticated" than somebody who looks at their wedding ring and says "Gold prices are up from when we got married; let's cash this sucker in and make some profit"?
That'd dodging the question and you know it. Maybe the ring is a family heirloom passed down for generations. Still not sophisticated? What about the person who's father left them his vintage 1913 archtop guitar, and they don't really play it that often but have fond memories of listening to their dad noodle around and play blues music in the evening?
Is it more reasonable to say that nobody should attach emotional value to any inanimate object, or to say that people have the right to decide by which name they'd like to be referred to, and that as a matter of basic respect you should put some effort in to learning how people want their names to be pronounced?
My husband and I also recently got married (congrats to you and your partner from us!) and we designed our rings from scratch - mine with a diamond alternative stone - as seen here: http://cl.ly/image/3A3R24042w0C. PeterGriffin would probably proceed to tell us that our rings are still just garbage sentimental trinkets distracting us from the "substance" of our relationship despite us "making stories" with them.
Nothing about spending the money to get our rings says that we can't also honor what the rings stand for by doing other things. Doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. That doesn't even come into the equation.
The same could be said about names - you can choose to keep a name due to an attachment while also honoring the origin of the name. This is why I'm just adding more onto my name instead of removing any bit of the name that my parents gave me. (My nickname is longer than my real name, even. My real name is a little too short.)
Ultimately it's a personal decision, and ultimately, like you point out, it's a matter of basic respect to respect someone's choice of name and name pronunciation. Nothing about a choice to be attached to something means that you're stuck "telling stories" and that you're forever doomed to be attracted to the symbol and not the substance.
I am actually quite saddened by the idea of someone living such a life. "Robotic" is kind of an understatement.
No I'm actually impressed you designed your own rings. In another setting that would certainly be worth a nice conversation over lunch or dinner with you and your husband.
Maybe my reaction is... beyond understanding... (cue in spooky music).
Also don't confuse "robotic" with my lack of focus on stupid things. I laugh, cry, hate and love a lot too. I can't understand why I need to be a stupid son of a bitch getting hung up on how people pronounce my name or getting overly attached to small shiny commercial objects, in order to do those things.
I also don't believe in witches and black magic. Oh, how robotic.
Okay I admit I was surprised ;) I figured that wouldn't be enough of a maker story. We only did it because we were bored by all the identical unsuitable rings we encountered. If we were going to stick with one symbol for our lives, may as well be exactly what we wanted instead of settling.
The robotic part, I suppose, is a combination of your personal feelings on the matter while refusing to see why it may be a problem for others. Not having an attachment to your name by itself is a personal choice I can respect.
BTW if it's of any interest, my first name is Jane. My nickname is Janey. My longer than my full name nickname is "janeylicious". Funny how nobody fucks up the last one (except maybe the spelling) but I have so much trouble with my plain first name to the point that I occasionally just make up a different name or rely only on the nicknames. The plain name stuff can backfire ;)
well wait, I'm confused; my wife worked with a jeweller to design my ring, and I worked with a jeweller to design her engagement ring and matching wedding band. Did we just roll over from "foolish to spend money on rings" to "it's okay because we designed them"? Or does that not count because we didn't make the wax, cast the metal, and set the stones ourselves?
I'm not calling you robot because you don't like to focus on things you think are stupid; I'm calling you robotic because you absolutely insist that anybody and everybody who DOES focus on things you think are stupid are stupid.
I wonder if you realize that just because your family bought some trinket (or whatever) for money some time in the past, it doesn't make it special. "Look, honey, my grandgrandfather wasted his money on this piece of junk. He was very susceptible to salesman pitches. He was also a lottery ticket buyer. A drunk. And he beat his wife. Boy, I'm glad I turned out better."
Now, if my grandgrandfather crafted a piece of jewelry, that makes it more interesting than throwing money on something someone else made. It's because of pure informational value. It makes it an object that can be studied, that can inform us how people thought and what their approach about something was. That makes it more valuable than the trivial "they had the money and they lacked the imagination to start a business or buy something useful, or do something else sensible, so they bought this crap here".
But actually most family trinkets don't have a history worth retelling. Usually it's some variation of poor people collecting money and buying/ordering this "symbol" and imagining they "made it", because they now have this thing here, a symbol of success and sophistication. Actually, I think this clip from Pulp Fiction about sums up my feelings about "family jewelry" well:
It's a sign of thinking primitively (of course, not that I blame the poor people clinging to bullshit, but it's nothing to tell the world about). De Beers and co. have made billions out of idiots buying tiny useless crystals as status symbols.
Sure, you can always put some family jewelry in a cupboard and leave it there to make an interesting conversation breaker (hey, my father kept this watch in his ass for 5 years!), because those usually are worth little to nothing on the market anyway.
Suggesting that if I don't respect the sentimental value of trinkets, so I can focus all my attention on "market value" and selling them is just some straw man you think you're oh so clever to pull off on me. But no, the market doesn't care about your ass watch. Nobody cares. You shouldn't either.
But to see someone who really puts great importance on such stuff, even to the point partially basing their self-worth on what their ancestors did (or didn't, as a matter of fact) is a big honking warning sign. Because if you keep looking back, you'll create much less to look forward to.
Focusing on the past too much is the reason why even generations do all the work, and odd generations spend their life "being proud of their families".
It doesn't matter if you're Einstein's grandgrandgranddaughter or Hitler's grandgrandgrandson. All you have left is some family property (if that), and a silly name. You have to make your "name" on your own. Your worth as a human being is not hereditary.
There are two kinds of people, those telling stories, and those making stories. Those telling stories are a commodity. I like this one: "1% of people make things happen, 9% of people notice what happens, and 90% are unaware of what happens."
By the way, I'm done explaining the basics of life to you, I have better shit to do. See ya.
P.S.: You should've read this post in Christopher Walken's voice.
Thanks for explaining the basics of life to me. Thanks to you, I've learned that
a) A hypothetical story about a hypothetical great-grandfather apparently invalidates the value of family heirlooms
b) crafted items are valuable because of the information they hold, which inform us how people thought and what their approach to something was. Their purchasing patterns, however, tell us absolutely nothing about how they thought, what their approach was, or what types of things they valued.
c) Having family heirlooms which were foolishly bought back in the day is primitive thinking (and a sign of being poor). If your will isn't one hundred percent cash you are wasting everybody's time.
d) Sentimental value is bullshit, and market value is a straw man; heirlooms apparently have literally no value at all.
e) You have to make your "name" on your own, but if your name is hard for people to pronounce then you should just deal with it when they give you a different one.
well, first of all I already have someone named Mark in my family. What's worse he works in the same industry.
Second, someone who changes my name to something totally different just to make it easier for them, screams "I don't give a flying f* who you are, and I can't be bothered to learn your name".
I use to allow people calling me many names - Mario, Mark, Marcus,Martin etc. That stopped when I realized that I'm not helping anyone by doing this, but it actually is weird when you're in a meeting and everyone calls you a different name.
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.
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...
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).
Well, even common names have many variants floating around, that's the point. I tend to cut people slack on things like names given that I can never remember how to spell things like commitment (two ms? two ts? both?!) without a spellchecker getting my back.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
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.
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?
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.
This is pretty close to what happens. It's generally phonetic, and yet there seems to be a wide variety of first pronunciations, which deviate from the phonetic by several syllables either way.
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.
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.
If you're Polish and you see a Polish name, you instantly know how to pronounce it. In the US It's more more hit-or-miss due to ethnical diversity and the English language itself.
Come to think of it, I'd like other people to use this site, but still wouldn't use it myself. Maybe it's because so far I can't see a way to mispronounce my last name and I've essentially given up on my first name.
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.
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].
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.
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.
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?"
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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).
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?
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 :-)
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.
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!!
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'.
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.)
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).
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.