“It’s ‘Hayna,’ right?”
“No, Heeeee-na. With a hard ‘e.’”
“Your name is Hardy?”
“My name is Heina. Aych-eee-eye-en-eh. Heina.”
“Please take a seat and wait to be called. It’ll be about fifteen minutes.”
“Okay.”
“Helena, you’re next! Helena? Oh, did she leave? Oh, no, she’s right over there! Come over here! Why didn’t you come when we called you, Helena? Too wrapped up in your book?”
“My name is Heina.”
“Ugh, that’s like, really hard.”
“You seem to have no trouble pronouncing the male pronoun ‘he’ and saying ‘Na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na… BATMAN!’”
“…”
“My name is Heina, not ‘Hana.’”
“But I like ‘Hana’ better. It means happy in Arabic. Don’t you want to be happy?”
“Heina, nice to meet you.”
“What was your name again?”
“Heina. Like Tina, just with an ‘H’ instead of a ‘T.’”
“So that’s Tina?”
“Aych-eee-eye-en-eh. It’s counterintuitively pronounced ‘heee-na.'”
“That’s a super pretty spelling and name, though.”
“It’s not really worth the trouble.”
“Of course it is! Who wouldn’t love to be unique?”
“I’d feel sleazy about this if I didn’t even know your name.”
“It’s sleazy no matter what, but sure, my name is Hannah.”
“No, tell me your real name.”
“It’s Hannah.”
Huh, interesting. I always thought about your name as “H-eye-na”, i.e. with the German [aɪ̯] diphthong, since, well, I’m German and that’s how I’d naturally pronounce it. Just “Heeeena” makes it sound, to me, like the “i” is in your name is silent, but good to know. 🙂
I’ve asked my parents over and over what caused them to pick this particular spelling, but have never gotten a straight answer. At this point, I think the ship has sailed for me to pick a better spelling, i.e. “Heena”.
That’s how I pronounced it in my head before Heina explained it, too. For the same reason. Now with the
“Heinous Heina” pun, my mindvoice reads the name the same way the first syllable of heinous (so more like “hey na” than “hee na”)
My favorite is when I’ve told them, and they are saying it right until I spell it, and then suddenly, my name is mangled or they give me a whole NEW name not related to what they were saying before, or what they just spelled. Man, nothing beats having a name people can’t process. (I also got yelled at by my first grade teacher because she called for Pie-ruh and I didn’t answer until she spelled it. I didn’t know my name could be pronounced differently. Yay, fun first day of school.)
The years I attended public school, I kept the order of names on the roster memorized so that if a substitute came in, I’d be able to anticipate their frowning confusion and preempt the whole ordeal with a quickly-raised hand and a “Heina, here!”
Yeah, the confused, silent break at the end of the alphabet was always me, because we were called by last names, and Germans find Polish last names beyond their ability to pronounce. And I didn’t even have that many consonants! (my last name back then was Zurawinska)
Ah, frowning confusion. Yes. Even after 41 years, it never ceases to amuse and annoy me.
I use two different names according to which language i’m immersed in. It’s just not worth the grief. But that’s a personal opinion and they are both on my birth certificate.
My sympathy, and my WTFs for all the people who couldn’t be arsed to learn to say your name properly.
I mean, I may mangle someone’s name the first couple of times, if it’s not one I’m used to saying, but I’m gonna TRY.
You’d be amazed at how often I have to spell my last name for people. It’s 4 letters, it’s an actual English word, and I live in the US.
I’ve had people mangling my last name for my entire life, so I feel yah. Its pronounced Dench btw, but I most commonly hear Doe (as in a dear) ench or even Don-ech which makes no sense whatsoever.
Lou Doench, #7
Well, is the “ch” a k-sound or the voiceless velar fricative [x] (like in the German “Bach” or the Scottish “loch”)? 😛
My given name is Teresa, a very common name in English-speaking countries. NOBODY can spell it or pronounce it, especially native speakers of English. In school or doctor’s offices, I would wait for the puzzled frown and the “Tear-AY-ze? Tressa? Tuh-russ-ya? Tracy?” There’s no point correcting them–“Teh-REE-suh” because a shocking part of the time, I’m told I’m saying it wrong. @@
There’s that woman on the Real Housewives of New Jersey who spells her name like yours but pronounces it Tu-rezz-uh and not like Teresa Guidice (Tu-REEs-Ah) pronounces it. It’s supposed to be the Italian way to pronounce it.
I usually get Carrie or Charlie, but my favorite was in a phone call just a couple of weeks ago, when I got transferred through several customer service reps, and my name went from Carlie to Carlina to Caroline to I think Charlotte. I just said yes every time.
Well, I guess it’s a good thing that your name is totally dependent on what random people like better. I am understanding if people genuinely have difficulty pronouncing a name, but this statement is annoyingly entitled.
This is my life. At least your name is pronounceable in an English phonetic system. It’s become second nature for me to just correct everyone on my name. I hate it. I also hate name tags. They are irrelevant.
I loved your writing on skeptchick and I am looking forward to reading this blog!
My father and I, on separate occasions, confounded desk clerks at two different hotels in New Orleans, who were respectively unable to find our reservations, because they were listed under the same misspelling of our name.
(And with this in mind, I’ll try to stop mentally saying “HEY-na”, even though it’s assonant with the way I pronounce the name of the blog)
My name is Jeanine. I feel your pain.
Names. And people. People who are completely unwilling to deal with anything that is not on the top ten list of baby names. We checked our daughter’s name against all the obstacles: You say it like you spell it in German, no weird sound combinations, no silent letters, no unusual sounds, everything.
The one thing we didn’t check was that people would immediately recognize it, because it’s Portuguese.
So the poor kid gets asked what her name is, she says it clearly, you can see people frown and then use a name that is very similar and a lot more common. I’m feeling bad for her.
Also, I kept my last name when we got married, but the kids have their dad’s name. Frequent conversation
Name of the kid: Kid Daddylastname
Your name?: Me Mylastname
Sorry, can you spell that? M-Y-L-A-S-T-N-A-M-E
Right, Mrs. Daddylastname…
My mom confused the living shit out of German bureaucrats because of the last name variations. Single mother, but her kids had the father’s last name, AND they had gendered endings so according to German bureaucracy, everyone in our household had a different last name. Which I’m sure is against at least half a dozen rules.
Oh, and funny enough, my sound image for Heina is apparently rather correct. Of course, I have no idea what the “original” phonemes are like.
Jadehawk
I would have taken my husband’s last name if it had been sort and/or easy to write. But though it is a very common name, it is also one of the many spellings. I would have ended up with something like PZ M(e/)y/iers.
I also know some Russian Germans who ended up with several different spellings on different official documents…
short. not sort
oh yes. I had three insurance cards, each with my last name misspelled in a different way. And it’s really not THAT difficult a name!
I do not have a name in any way strange, unusual, or out of the ordinary. I have, in fact, the third most popular girls’ name in the US in the year I was born. But for some reason, people — specifically male people — feel an urge to call me by the diminutive version of it, a version which I do not use and have never used. Someone tried to mansplain to me once that calling me, uninvited, by the “shortened” version of my name (“Susie” is not shorter than “Susan”) “should be considered a compliment as the person feels comfortable enough to use the more ‘familiar’ version”. (My response: “Er, no. If I’ve specifically introduced myself as ‘Susan’, then calling me ‘Susie’ or any other childish babytalk nickname is most assuredly not a compliment. It’s a condescension. The only thing more insulting, in fact, is making an issue of it after I’ve asked to be called by my name rather than by a name that is not mine.”
I’d consider my name pretty easy to say and not unfamiliar in English-speaking countries, but I do remember a lot of substitutes calling me “Jenny” instead of “Jamie.”