H’s cousin had the same thing happen!
I also worked with a guy whose wife who had the same first name as him! And I volunteered at the organization where the wife worked.
You’re married to Stephen Colbert?!?!?!
And to add my contribution, my D’s middle name is Gray. Her HS graduation announcer left out the “r”. She got over it pretty quickly, though.
Regarding that incident about the outrageous mispronunciations at a graduation ceremony - my understanding is that they were written out phonetically, then the announcer tried to pronounce the phonetic versions. Kind of like putting things through multiple iterations of Google Translate. Not an excuse, of course, but puts it in a little context.
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I’m surprised at all the conversation and disappointment over mispronounced names at graduation . I’m sure it happened to my kids but I and anyone who knew them knew it was them so wouldn’t matter to me!
What a terrible job to have - to try and say all those names without missteps. Do your best.
I was too busy looking at the smiles, hand pumping all through my tears to get stuck on a name mispronounced.
In general I agree, but did you listen to the video clip? There was not a single recognizable name announced. Zero names, whether correct or incorrect. Gobbledegook!
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I’d love to see how the kids did their phonetic spellings. I wonder if they had just had their names if it would have been easier for the reader.
Americans typically butcher Italian words. In case unknowing eyes find this page, here are some problematic phonemes:
Ch = K (bruschetta – bru-SKET’TAH, Pinocchio, chianti)
Gn = N’yuh (lasagna, gnocchi)
Sc = Sh before I or E, Sk before the other vowels
C = Ch before I or E, K before the other vowels
Gli = L’ye
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I did not - but will take your word for it. And it’s ok if that is what is important to people - names can be meaningful in many circumstances- I just am surprised at the # who feel that way and expressed it here!
@abasket I was only mildly annoyed at my daughter’s mispronunciation. the closest example I could give for w/o sharing my daughter’s name is the equivalent of someone saying “Anna…” instead of “Anne…”. Her name is that simple and classic, yet the woman said the wrong name. If she had an uncommon name, weird spelling, etc, it would have been understandable.
I could immediately tell on the jumbotron that my daughter was upset. This was a kid who spent the last year and half 3500 miles away from home in an apartment mostly by herself taking remote classes due to the pandemic. Most of her friends did not even bother to come back for graduation. They had flown home rather than stay off campus once classes went remote. During those last three semesters, her two roommates were rarely there as their homes were w/in an hour of campus so they went home as much as they could. It was isolating and not the way she wanted to finish out her junior and senior years (plus she was studying abroad fall semester of her junior year, so came back for spring and got to see her friends for about 5 weeks b/f everything shut down). She was excited to at least have an in person graduation, even if it wasn’t what it normally would have been. I think all of that pent up emotion hit her when it was finally her “moment” and they couldn’t get a simple name correct. It wasn’t just my daughter either - the announcer was butchering a lot of names. There were two people doing it and the other guy was doing an awesome job. It left us shaking our heads why they had given the job to this particular woman. In the grand scheme of things, certainly not a big deal to be upset about but in the moment I understand why she was upset.
I’ve spent my whole life spelling my first and last name. It doesn’t bother me. But we did take that into consideration when naming our kids and gave them easy to spell/say names in English.
It’s funny tho b/c I work in customer service and have to look up customers all day long. It amazes me the number of people who get annoyed when you ask them to spell their name b/c either it’s a name with numerous spellings or they have a non-traditional way of spelling it (like how am I supposed to know you spell your name Hayleigh and can’t find it in our database b/c I’ve tried Haley, Hailey, Hayley, Haylee, etc…). It’s so much easier when people immediately say, “Hayleigh, H-A-Y-L-E-I-G-H” rather than have me guess.
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Gay is an actual surname.
Oh I’m aware. My H had a classmate/friend with that surname. My point was, that was not her name.
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Gay can also be a first name, though I doubt that it’s used much any more. The first name of my RA in my freshman dorm hall was Gay, but that was in 1966-7.
My SIL’s middle name is Gay.
And here’s one my grandma used to get a big kick out of. A little girl she grew up with was the last in a line of girls. Her parents tried for a boy three times after the first girl was born. The poor fourth, my grandma’s playmate, was Isabecca Walterina Jefferina Polkford. Guess the parents couldn’t let go of Isaac, Walter, and Jeffrey. 
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In grade school, there were 2 other girls in my grade with the same 1st name. My family’s last name is a fairly common (in HI) Chinese last name. I never had to spell it.
In middle school, I again had 2 other (different) girls with same 1st name, tho the girls were different. In HS, I’m not sure whether there with others with my same 1st name—none were in any of my classes but there were about 750 students in my grade.
The year I graduated from HS, 2 other girls on our island of Oahu graduated with the same 1st & last name as mine. One went to same flagship U as me for freshman year and then transferred to the same OOS U as I did sophomore year and lived in same upperclassmen dorm!
When I married, I took H’s 5 letter last name and I haven’t met anyone with my 1st & last name combined since in person.
We name our kids easy to pronounce 3 syllable names. Both kids seem to like their names. S had another kid at his HS with same name but different middle initials and one grade older—we knew the family.
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I think I may have mentioned this on CC before when discussing some other topic but my husband sister, and my husband’s brother’s wife have the same exact First, Middle and Last Name. They live a few blocks from each other, for a time their kids went to the same school and they shared some of the same doctors. T made things very confusing at times (getting calls from doctor, school, etc for each other).
Funny thing is, their first name is not that common. I mean it’s not a weird name by any means, but when I looked it up on the SSA’s Most Popular Name by year, it was ranked in the mid 300s when one was born and the mid 400s when the other was born. So kind of crazy that beyond that, they even have the same middle name. My Husband’s wife never married that’s why her last name and my BIL’s wife, have same last name (my other SIL took my BIL’s name when they married).
My husband and my brother have the same first name. My mother didn’t think it was popular when she named my brother but turned out to be in the top 10 the year he was born and remained there when DH was born a few years later, across the country from us. My name has never broken top 100 and is now up around 1000 LOL.
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Oh that has to be a typo!!
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@thumper1 
ha, a definite typo as I obviously meant his sister!
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As an educator, I’ve come to learn the importance of getting it right. We now have audio files of kids (or parents of the very young ones) saying their names on our school software and both kids and teachers are loving it.
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Mispronouncing his last name was the final streak in the list of things that annoyed my kid about Tufts. They asked them to write how to pronounce it and he wrote down the very common word it sounds like. His pronunciation is the common one (accent on the first syllable) but there is a famous actor who accents the second one. And apparently the reader of names thought that she knew better than my kid how his name should be pronounced. Or at least that is what it felt like!
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Names are very personal. If no one bothers to ask us how they should be pronounced, most of us will just roll with the punches if they’re not pronounced correctly. But if we are asked how our name should be pronounced, and if we provide the correct pronunciation when asked, it’s understandable if we get a little miffed if it’s not pronounced correctly. It’s kind of a slap in the face. If you’re going to ignore what I tell you, just don’t ask.
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I know some of my Mds have patients with my 1st and last name. They are careful to always confirm birthdates , which fortunately are different. I also know there are others on Oahu with same 1st & last name. We have gotten some phone calls for the DJ which shares his name.
D’s name is the same 1st & last of a well-known Oahu immigration attorney and she says sometimes folks are very nice to her when they think she might help them with immigration. haha!
Our middle names are different but the 1st & last names confuse folks.