"No. Your name is..."

[east93]

Do any of you ever get corrected on your own name?

I have, more than once. It's quite frustrating.
I once had a substitute art teacher tell me I was pronouncing my name wrong, I told her no, I wasn't, and she said:
"Yes, you are. My cousin says it a different way so you're wrong."
...
My friend was livid that this teacher was actually trying to correct me on my own name.
I pronounce it the Arabic way, so I know it's right because I've had dozens of Arabic speaking people tell me how it's pronounced, couple with the fact I know how to read Arabic, so I know how my own name should be said.
/rant


I was wondering how often have other berries, been corrected on their own names and their experiences with name correction in general.

[hayley88]

What is your name,out of interest?
Having a fairly standard name,I've never had an such issues myself. But a friend with the surname Ricci (like Christina) was told he was pronouncing it incorrectly by a teacher, she insisted it should be pronounced Rye-chi.
I think sometimes people do pronounce their names incorrectly,such as Esther with a "th" sound. I'd imagine in those cases,it is down to the parents themselves not knowing how pronounce the name.
I knew someone who pronounced Charlotte, not shar-lotte as is the norm but char-lotte as in charred.

[amberdaydream]

Never on my fn, but my mn is Cait, prn like Kate. This has two issues:
-The Irish pronunciation is kind of like 'Cat', so I get some people pronouncing it like that and when I correct them I am accused of pronouncing it wrong. I know the Irish prn is 'Cat' but my parents spelled it Cait, they say it like Kate and I had trouble explaining to one person in particular that there is absolutely nothing I can do about that.
-A group of people in my school once assumed I was only spelling it Cait to be youneek (even though it's not that youneek, it's not Quaiyte or anything), when in actuality I prefer Kate or Cate ><. They hassled me about it until I proved it with my homework diary, (has our full names on them.)
-Microsoft Word says it's wrong, too.

EDIT: I know that in my case my parents didn't get the prn right so we may have brought it on ourselves but still... nothing I can do about it. I bet I would have more prn problems if I pronounced it the Irish way. It just really annoys me when people think that correcting others on their own names makes them look intelligent. Gonna halt here before I start ranting... ><

[namernames]

My name is Maggie and I'm forever explaining to people that my name isn't Megan and isn't short for Margaret.

[greyer]

Not my first name, but my middle name Aileen has to be explained a lot. It's pronounced exactly like Eileen, but sometimes I get AY-leen instead. My ex boyfriend used to insist it was pronounced AY-leen and that I was saying it wrong, then again he used to pronounce lots of names wrong (like Alain, which is exactly like Alan, he pronounced Al-LANE). Drove me crazy.

And my last name, which is pretty self-explanatory, always gets mispronounced. It's very similar to Kenton (only one letter off), but I get Cannon, Kennan, Canyon, Keenan, et c. all for no apparent reason. Oh well.

[lahdeedah]

No one's ever really had trouble pronouncing my name. Spelling it though --- oh boy! In elementary school I had a substitute teacher who made me spell it "right" because I was spelling it "wrong." I was so embarrassed, that single encounter made me hate my name for a long time (sometimes I still don't like it).

[east93]

What is your name,out of interest?
Having a fairly standard name,I've never had an such issues myself. But a friend with the surname Ricci (like Christina) was told he was pronouncing it incorrectly by a teacher, she insisted it should be pronounced Rye-chi.
I think sometimes people do pronounce their names incorrectly,such as Esther with a "th" sound. I'd imagine in those cases,it is down to the parents themselves not knowing how pronounce the name.
I knew someone who pronounced Charlotte, not shar-lotte as is the norm but char-lotte as in charred.

Ahh, yes. I understand that.
My name is Malika(h) btw. We say it "Mah-leh-Kah", most say it "Mah-lee-kah". Mahlehkah is the proper Arabic pronunciation, it's the feminine form of Malik (prn Mah-lek) which means King. Malika(h) means Queen.
It also means Angel in Swahili I think, and it means Hard-working/Industrious in Hungarian.

[tressa]

My name is Tressa and at a few of my jobs ive had to wear a nametag. This one time I had a little old man read it and go "Oh. I get it. It's T, like the letter T, and the rest is Reesa. T-Reesa. Theresa!"
He was so cute about it though, so i didnt have the heart to say no.

[east93]

Never on my fn, but my mn is Cait, prn like Kate. This has two issues:
-The Irish pronunciation is kind of like 'Cat', so I get some people pronouncing it like that and when I correct them I am accused of pronouncing it wrong. I know the Irish prn is 'Cat' but my parents spelled it Cait, they say it like Kate and I had trouble explaining to one person in particular that there is absolutely nothing I can do about that.
-A group of people in my school once assumed I was only spelling it Cait to be youneek (even though it's not that youneek, it's not Quaiyte or anything), when in actuality I prefer Kate or Cate ><. They hassled me about it until I proved it with my homework diary, (has our full names on them.)
-Microsoft Word says it's wrong, too.

EDIT: I know that in my case my parents didn't get the prn right so we may have brought it on ourselves but still... nothing I can do about it. I bet I would have more prn problems if I pronounced it the Irish way. It just really annoys me when people think that correcting others on their own names makes them look intelligent. Gonna halt here before I start ranting... ><

I agree with that! It's not a good look when someone's arrogantly correcting someone on their own name. It's one thing to point out a proper pronunciation, but once the name bear points out that no, they say it a different way, that should be the end of the conversation. What do they want? You to go legally change your name now just because of spelling?

Ugh.
/rant

[katushka]

All the time. Not on pronunciation, though. My name is Katie and everyone constantly asks for my 'full name'. I've posted about it on here before, but your story reminded me of another one. In eighth grade we were taking whichever standardized tests are given that year, and one of the teachers that was monitoring told me I needed to put my given name, no nicknames. I told her it was my given name. She took my booklet and brought back a new one (I don't know why, I thought they sent a limited number, but it was that important to her). So I wrote my name. In retrospect, that probably wasn't the best way to handle the situation. I was never in any of her classes, she couldn't have known, but she could have listened. Long story short, I was taken to the office and the vice principal thought it was funny. She still insisted on seeing my name on some official document, though.

Please try not to get too upset about this kind of thing. Yes, people can be very rude about what they 'know' and it's frustrating. Try to laugh about it because it is your name and you are saying it properly. Even if you weren't, you didn't choose it or teach yourself how to say it, so bringing it up just shows how rude she really is.