This.

[nwhiker]

OMG, this, so much this.

Kamala versus Daenerys.

I have been mocked for my name, it's been laughed at, othered, and embarrassed. I have been told "that's not American, is it?" It's been made clear to me that "real Americans" have "American names."

People never ever say it correctly, even though the last name at least is pronounced almost exactly at it's written.

Years ago, I almost donated $5 to a Republican, can't even remember who. The guy on the name started with "Is this..." and he said my name perfectly. It had never happened before, and it has never happened since, that someone will say it correctly, or without the "I'm butchering this" or "Wow, that's long!"

So yeah.

My name has always been a sore point for me. I still have a hard time forgiving my parents. Yes, I know that now people are more ok with weird ass names, though not completely, but when I was a child? It was a constant source of mockery and set me apart from kids my age, when all I'd ever wanted was to be ignored, one of the crowd.

But then again. My mother was fan of an Egyptian singer, called Oum Kalthoum, where Oum means mother. One day she was talking about how much she loved that singer and said to me "I should have named you Oum Kalthoum." She was completely serious. So I guess Leila was, in fact, my best case scenario.

Comments

[camelsamba]

People mocked you for "Leila"? I never would have expected that! Or did they mock you for your last name and mispronounce Leila? (I used to be guilty of mispronouncing Leila.) My last name was Perkowski so I get where you're coming from.

[nwhiker]

All of the above. Mocked mostly for my last name, I supposed, but... twitted I suppose would be the best term more for Leila.

People still mispronounce which bugs me not at all unless they don't learn after a correction or two, but when I was a kid? Oh yeah. This in a suburb of NYC, in a very Italian/Catholic area.

Mainly stuff like "why did you have such a weird name?" and "what kind of name is that?" "do your parents not speak English?" (the latter from a Girl Scout leader. She's also the person who explained to all of us that people with blue eyes were "exceptional"). "Do you have another name we can use?" The curiosity never felt benign, ya know?

I'll not even start on my last name. In first grade Mitchell Bransdorf started calling me "Bowl of Jelly" or "Bowl of Jello". I wasn't even fat. :P

I was the kid with nose in a book who just wanted to blend in and be ignored.

Perkowski: same diff, right, said exactly as it's spelled and people look at you weird when you say that like oh, no, no way, it has to be more complicated? :)

[camelsamba]

I'm so sorry you had to endure all that. Why are kids so mean to each other??

One weird error for Perkowski was inserting a T - like Petrowski. "There is no T in that name, people!" Maybe their eyes were confused because of my first name? I probably experienced teasing, but I don't remember the details so it either wasn't sustained or wasn't very mean. Certainly not like you experienced. It was during an era when there were lots of "dumb Polack" jokes but I was confident enough in my braininess that I didn't mind those.

[nwhiker]

Also, over the years, I've been called Lala, Lulu, Lally, and Lola. It's like people can't see what is written and just make up the closest name that they can.

I don't mind people mangling my name the first or even the second time, but when it's repeated, it starts to become an issue, ya know?

I once sat in a doctors office for over an hour, steaming that I had not been called when people who'd gotten there after me had been. Turns out they'd called for Lala, and I never figured out it meant me. I found out when I went to complain, and she insisted that I hadn't been there and she'd called multiple times. LOL.

[camelsamba]

I can imagine being steamed at that doctor's office!

Those errors are so weird. I can understand someone using "Lila" because that was the error I made. But Lulu? Bizarre.

PE was a graduation requirement at Rice; it was graded but didn't count towards GPA. My first semester, our TA was someone from my (dorm-equivalent) who should have known that I don't go by the name Pat. Grade was purely by attendance and I never missed class, but I got a B - I finally decided she must have been calling "Pat" instead of "Tricia" and I didn't respond.

[camelsamba]

Okay, I read the article after my initial comment. I appreciate the distinction made between mispronunciation and DISpronunciation. I learned from a podcast not long ago that Parvati (such as in Harry Potter series) has different emphasis than the way I'd always pronounced it in my head, so now I do it properly (it's different from the movies and audiobooks). But it is true that there are phonetic distinctions that can be hard for English speakers to hear and say. I work really hard to correctly pronounce the names of Indian parkrun friends, but there's one distinction that I honestly cannot hear or produce - the "th" in Kranthi, which I'm told is sort of between "t" and how I say "th." But I would never intentionally say it as something like "cranky" or "grantham" [possible anglicization]!