say my name, bitch!

May 5, 2008 11:33 AM

pronunciationfilter: how do i mitigate the awkwardness of correcting someone who is pronouncing my name wrong after a significant amount of time has already passed?

so i've been dating this guy for about a month and a half. the first several times i heard him say my name, he put the accent on the wrong syllable (it's an unusual name but not hard to pronounce). usually when i first meet someone and they haven't heard my name or ask how to pronounce it, i will say, "it rhymes with —" and it's no problem. i thought i had this conversation with him when we first met, but then i heard him mispronounce it a few times thereafter. i thought i could correct this without outright pointing out to him that he was mispronouncing it by saying my name when leaving him voicemails or when he'd hear me telling others how to say it when asked (he even pointed out how one hostess at a restaurant was having such problems even after i repeated it to her several times). i haven't heard him say my name very often (we both answer our phone calls with, "hey…!") and thought he'd gotten it but yesterday he said my name again, and again, he pronounced it wrong.

what do i do here?! am i going to have to awkwardly point out to him that he's been saying my name wrong all this time, and particularly considering how much time we've spent together? or is there some other way i can do this with much less awkwardness?

posted by violetk to human relations (24 comments total)

am i going to have to awkwardly point out to him that he's been saying my name wrong all this time

Yes. But you can mitigate the awkwardness by making a joke of it. Tell him you'll fine him next time he says it wrong, or kiss him when he says it right, or whatever works for your relationship. The important thing is to get the message across without sounding censorious.
posted by languagehat at 11:38 AM on May 5 [3 favorites]

I think some people honestly have trouble repeating things correctly. My coworker and I had the nuclear-nukular argument once. I was saying it very slowly and clearly nu-cle-ar. I wrote it out as I was doing it, even. He repeated after me, "yeah, I know, nuke-you-lar". He really thought he was saying it exactly as I had just said it.
posted by Green Eyed Monster at 11:41 AM on May 5 [1 favorite]

I often find that things are awkward only if you make them so. Just tell him. Casually. If he feels bad about it (out of concern for having offended you with the mispronunciation), tell him it's not a big deal.

If he's the kind of insecure guy who has a complex about being corrected, then there's deeper issues you have to worry about.
posted by randomstriker at 11:46 AM on May 5

I've found that saying, "Hey, I feel a little awkward saying this, but..." makes it less awkward, or at least easier for me to say whatever I need to say.
posted by overglow at 11:51 AM on May 5

Just smile and correct him. Don't make a big production of it, just say, "okay, look, honeypants, repeat after me: snuh-FUH-blah." Be cheerful and don't be apologetic or eggshells about it; and follow up with positive feedback going forward until it sticks. Laugh, as necessary, when it comes up.
posted by cortex at 11:52 AM on May 5 [2 favorites]

My name is often mispronounced or misspelled. Just be easygoing about it, and make sure he is reassured that you're not offended by the error, and that lots of very well-meaning people make that mistake accidentally, but it does no real harm. be honest: tell him you should have corrected him sooner, but you were nervous about upsetting him, and that you hope he's not embarassed.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 11:52 AM on May 5 [2 favorites]

Haha. I had a new neighbor move in and he called me jer-ed for a year instead of jir-rard. I just went along with it and thought it was really funny.
With your relationship that is obviously not an ideal solution.

The next time he says it wrong just let him know. It's not like you've been together for years and he is saying it wrong still. A month and a half isn't that big of a deal =]
posted by zephyr_words at 11:54 AM on May 5

Ha! Your title made me spew Pepsi all over my computer. Thanks a lot.

Anyway, when you correct him, pretend like you thought he had been saying your name correctly all this time, and that this was the first time you noticed him saying it wrong. That may confuse him, but at least he won't feel insulted.
posted by Dec One at 11:57 AM on May 5

I want to explicitly disagree with Dec One's suggestion. If someone I'd spent a lot of time with told me that they'd only just noticed that I'd mispronounced their name for a month and a half, I'd mostly wonder why they'd hit me up with such an obvious fabrication.

You're correcting his pronunciation, not trying to save his family's name from disgrace; an implausible lie ("you're mispronouncing my name, but I just now noticed, because I'm...unfamiliar with my own name!") seems out of order.
posted by cortex at 12:12 PM on May 5

Just get a friend to say your name in front of him.
posted by poppo at 12:16 PM on May 5

Sit down with him privately, hold his hand, and with a very serious demeanor say, "Our relationship has progressed to the point where we need to take the next big step."
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 12:18 PM on May 5 [26 favorites]

Just get a friend to say your name in front of him.

Unlikely to work any better than her saying it on his voicemail repeatedly and telling other people how to pronounce it, in front of him.

He probably genuinely thinks what he is saying is exactly what you say in your voicemails and what you say when you're explaining to other people how to pronounce your name.

Is it a major issue? (are you going to dump him if he just can't get it) I don't see any non-awkward way around this, given the more subtle approaches you've already taken. If you're dead-set on him being able to pronounce it, you're just going to have to tell him he's doing it wrong and work on it until he can do it right (or gets fed up and leaves)
posted by missmagenta at 12:31 PM on May 5

Start changing the stress on his name, and see what he says.
posted by kosmonaut at 1:07 PM on May 5 [2 favorites]

I have a very hard name and due to the fact that I am not american sometimes i have a very hard time pronouncing some words. .....If i am dating someone it is very rare when i do call that person by their first name unless we are in fight. My name has been mispronounced by soooo many people that I've gotten to the point of no return and just got myself a nickname (a much shorter version of my name)....since it is bothering you that much have a talk with him but please ask him if he truly cannot pronounce it right...if that is the case teach him and help him pronounce it.....or get a nickname....
posted by The1andonly at 1:18 PM on May 5

Next time it comes up, laughing but sweet- "Dude! It's Violetk, not Violetk!"

Also, don't discount the possibility that he knows it and just screwed it up. Like not looking at the lazy eye, or cousin Strawberry's birthmark, sometimes the thing you don't want to do is the thing you end up doing. So, he knows how to pronounce it, in the moment (knowing it was a big deal, well, not a *little* deal) he couldn't take the pressure and screwed it up.
posted by dirtdirt at 1:38 PM on May 5

I have no advice to offer, only commisseration. I had a few teachers over the years that continually mispronounced my first name, despite me correcting them during the first few weeks of school. After a certain point, I just started answering to the mispronounced name, since I couldn't think of a polite way to say "Hey, dunce, get the peanut butter out of your ears, I've told you a dozen times my name is XXX!" Once I graduated to the working world, I encountered the same problem at my first job...a Fortune 500 company, I'm one of the youngest employees, and several upper-echelon mucky-mucks still mispronounce my name despite a few initial corrections on my part. I begin to wonder...what is the etiquette in such a situation? How can you not make the offender feel like a douche after correcting him multiple times? Yet, why should you resign yourself to answering to the wrong name?
posted by Oriole Adams at 2:02 PM on May 5

I used to have a painfully awkward last name, very ethnic and difficult to pronounce and spell. My now-wife learned how to spell and pronounce it properly within a few weeks of our first date, which none of my previous girlfriends had been able to do. I found that to be really, really nice, and it really highlights what a courteous and thoughtful person she was (and is.)

So that's something to think about before you bring this up with him, as if he still doesn't get it he probably doesn't care enough to get it, and that's a red flag. Having said that, just start mispronouncing his name the same way. If he brings it up, say "oh, I was just doing what you do -- I thought you were doing that as a joke! Do you really not know how to pronounce my name? Good thing I don't love you for your brains." Then give him a quick kiss and onward and forward.
posted by davejay at 2:19 PM on May 5

Get someone else to correct him, and make a big deal about it. Then you can shrug it off and say, "Yeah, it's actually pronounced Bleh not Blah, but I answer to either. It's not a big deal." I have an unusual first name, and this works 99% of the time.
posted by donajo at 4:07 PM on May 5

I had friends and teachers that mispronounced my name for six years! Finally, one day my friends were over at home and they heard my mum calling me by the right pronunciation. It's a really good way to clear the air, something like "Oh, yeah, that's how it's really said but it's not that much of an issue." Some people actually got quite upset over me not mentioning that they had been saying my name wrong all this time (then again, I had let it go on for six years). In my mind it had developed into a "family name" and a "everyone else name". So, yeah, I guess if anything don't let it go on for that long.
posted by liquorice at 4:48 PM on May 5

I have to disagree with donajo. I have an unusual first name too.
You could have someone else correct him. But to tell him that "you will answer to either and it's not a big deal" seems wrong. If it wasn't a big deal you wouldn't be asking all of us.
posted by nimsey lou at 4:54 PM on May 5

The more monolingual he is, the deafer he is, the tone-deafer he is, the more foreign he is to the language your name is native to, the more he habitually learns new words from reading rather than conversation, the more divergent your and his normal speaking accents, and the more your name deviates from the phonetic pronounciation of its spelling, the more trouble he will have with it. None of these mean he doesn't care about you.

I agree with the advice of a practice session as mentioned above. Rather than you saying your name and him trying to repeat it, have him try different potential pronounciations ("ELL-ees, EEE-lees, ELL-eez, EEE-leez"), varying one vowel or consonant, a syllable at a time, until he finds one that sounds right to your ears. Then have him repeat that one. If he doesn't get it, maybe he can't get it, for the reasons above or perhaps some other reason that isn't his fault. (Especially if there are other words he just can't pronounce properly.)
posted by aeschenkarnos at 6:51 PM on May 5

Have you considered that he's one of those people who mispronounces names on purpose?
posted by gjc at 6:54 PM on May 5

cortex has the right answer. be funny, smile, and give him a big reinforcing kiss afterwards.
posted by thinkingwoman at 6:57 PM on May 5

He might just need to be reminded repeatedly and coached to say it over and over until he gets it right.

I'm terrible with pronunciation (all that reading, it's bad for you!), and I had to have a friend do repeated drills with me when I started work at a company whose name I couldn't pronounce properly. As much as I wanted to and knew that it was very important to others that I had the proper pronoounciation, it didn't work to just be told a few times what the right pronunciation was and hear other people say it. I'd mix up the right way and wrong way. Other people seem to be much better at this than I am. Maybe your boyfriend has the same problem.
posted by yohko at 11:03 AM on May 6