My DH’s last name is unusual and often mispronounced. In fact, our youngest had an argument with DH over the pronunciation when he was young. When our middle kid graduated from HS, the principal properly pronounced his last name. We then went to dinner with friends who very sincerely asked if he was upset that they mispronounced his name. They were embarrassed when they realized that they (and many others) were saying it incorrectly.
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Heck, H’s last name is pronounced differently within his dad’s immediate family!
This was inexcusable! 
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My maiden name is spelled differently within the immediate family. Think something like St. Amant, St-Amant, Saint Amant, Saint-Amant.
Oooooooh, my. Inexcusable. But the two young people they profiled seem to have a sense of humor about it.
But how the heck does this happen???
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During my daughter’s high school graduation rehearsal, her principal, a nun, butchered her Chinese middle name badly. She mispronounced many other students’ names also.
Afterwards, I sent her an email explaining the correct pronunciation. She apologized profusely and during the actual ceremony pronounced every single name correctly.
My dad’s funeral might have made me sensitive about such things. The minister kept referring to my dad as Bill until finally, someone yelled “his name is Ike!”
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Simon Estes announced names at DD’17’s college graduation. I have no idea if he got any wrong, but he said them VERY confidently 
My girls had a couple of kids in the grades ahead of them at school with the same last name spelling as us, but different pronunciation. Surprisingly, people generally got it right though. I did joke with older DD that she should marry one of them and hyphenate. Which brings another interesting thought if she “took his name” she wouldn’t have had to change her name but would she change pronunciation after the wedding lol?
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Can I confess that I don’t even really know how to pronounce my maiden name? I grew up saying it three different ways. Any of those were fine.
In general, I don’t mind misspellings or mispronunciations. I hated the latter in school, because teachers knew they were butchering it the first time and wanted me to correct them so they could learn, and I was shy and hated my last name (very easy to make fun of) and just wanted to get it over with and move on to someone else. My first name is a very common, simple two syllable word. My way of spelling it is the historical way that probably 90% of people use. There are some other odd variations. But once we went to some fast food pizza place and they wrote my name on the box and every single letter was wrong. We still get a chuckle over that one.
The only one that sort of irritated me was at younger S’ senior soccer night when they announce the parents with the kids in a ceremony. The very odd (and creepy) teacher who was announcing it completely changed my first name to a male name with the same first letter Everyone was like huh? Apparently the teacher liked to joke that he was going to mess things up on purpose. As I said - very odd and creepy.
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My kid was in the baseball World Series. Televised. The entire town filled restaurants and bars to watch. Each kid’s name is said a lot when they are calling plays. We had to write out each name phonetically. Some were tougher than others. All were butchered to the point where kids and people in town still make jokes about it. It was like they were making a satire movie like Best in Show.
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My nephew’s middle name is pronounced “Thomas” but spelled differently. He wrote it as “Thomas” on the card he handed to the person announcing it. The announcer not only messed up Thomas, but his first and last names as well (and his last name had been very well known in the news around the time of graduation)! At least he had the decency to mutter “sorry” to him.
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Nothing beats John Travolta pronouncing Idina Menzel as “Adele Dazeem” at the Oscars 
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D also had to provide the phonetic spelling of her name for graduation. I didn’t hear any obvious errors and there were tons of very different names. They did a good job!
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My first name is fairly unusual, and has a pretty unique spelling. My last name (which I took upon marriage) is also not common – I think there are only 3 of us firstname, lastnames combos in the world.
What I think is funny is that my mother once told me that I am pronouncing my first name incorrectly! The mispronunciation is the “a” in the middle of my name, and we each intone the phonetics of that “a” slightly differently!
Frankly this kind of gross incompetence tells me a great deal about both the school, and the announcer. There’s a reason I am an elitist . . .
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Lol. My ds just got his MBA from an elite business school. He said there were several names that were mispronounced during the diploma ceremony. So, I’m not sure how elitism fits in, but maybe I am misunderstanding what you are saying.
My first name was very popular in the midwest in the early 60s. Often spelled wrong, but I dealt with it. Last name was very generic (Irish, but not obviously so). My female cousins are Diane, Carol, Linda, Nancy, Susan & Karen, so you know when we were all born!
H’s last name is Jewish, but very Germanic. I’m shocked at how often it’s mispronounced (it’s said exactly like it’s spelled. No surprises, no unusual consonant combinations.
My best friend in jr high was a Sara. Noone else had that name. When my kids were small, there were multiple Sara(h)s in every class. S1 has his paternal GF’s first name (uncommon). One possible nickname, seldom used. Does get misspelled in favor of the more Anglo and renowned version of the name. S2 has a Jewish name that was uncommon, but not heavily ethnic. Thought we had the unique part (and no nickname) solved, until the mid-90s when three of them were in every preschool and elementary school class together (and they were buddies)!
If we’d had a daughter, the name was going to be something that expressed competence and power on a resume (and had a wide variety of nicknames if she wanted one). At the time, we didn’t consider a gender-neutral name, but would give it more serious consideration if we were choosing now.
My original choice was a more ethnic name, which H vetoed, in part because it was ethnic, in part because FN+MN (which was ultimately the first name we agreed upon)+LN was going to be too long to fit on a credit card or SAT form (27 letters!). We don’t have any cool family last names to use as a middle name, but know folks who have used a first initial, middle name professionally.
My former DIL uses a variation of her last name as her professional handle and programming name in her senior tech role. The sexism and bias she got from male programmers when she coded projects and the input was labeled under her first name was horrendous – til she used the gender-neutral modification of her last name. And she was the LEAD PROGRAMMER/PM on these assignments!
I read this several years ago, but don’t have a subscription and can’t share. If anyone’s a subscriber and is willing to share, this was a good piece.
And then’s there the racial/ethnicity implicit bias factoring into hiring/promotion decisions…this is a summary from the UK, but there are many research articles out there that discuss this:
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Several names, understandable. If I gave that a grade, A-. Every name, mangled so they were not recognizable as names? And the disaster allowed to continue? Fail.
it is not rocket science. How on the ball do you have to be to read some names properly? That bar isn’t high!
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As someone that is dyslexic (as is John Travolta) and has no sense of “order” (as I kid I would just start writing right to left, left to right, middle out) it makes complete sense to me 
@MMRose Have you seen this clip of Ncuti Gatwa?
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My cousin married someone with the same last name. The name is common where I was raised but very uncommon in her part of the country. The invitations were weird, but after that we all just got used to it.
Pretty funny!