~William Shakespeare
My name has never been an easy one to pronounce for native Americans. Working at a client site, I realized how many different versions of my name can exist. Nowadays most of the phone conversations/client meetings often start in one of the following ways (all of these are true) -
Me: "Hi this is Ujjwal from ABC group working with Information Security..."
They 1: "I am sorry. Who?"
They 2: (silence; and my name was never attempted during the entire conversation)
They 3: "What on earth does that mean?"
They 4: "Do you have another name?"
They 5: "I am sorry, how do you spell that?"
They 6: "OK! Great!! (hands off tone!)"
They 7: "You-j-wal? Huge-wall? Is that correct? (looking up with triumphant gleaming eyes for affirmation)"
They 8: "Can you email that to me?"
They 9: "
Me: "
They 9: "Sigh! I guess thats the reality of today - Multicultural Globalization. Where do you come from?"
The options included everything from Mexico, South America, Ireland, Poland, Iran, Lebanon, Africa, Pakistan, definitely not Asia (which means China, Japan, Korea in North America), Brazil etc etc. Finally, they gave up. I have given up too!!!
13 comments:
U-dizzle
You bet, in time you do give in.
I have lost track of the number of times I have tried explaining how my surname is spelled let alone pronounced (BHATTACHARYA makes the best tongues completely twisted).
Now I do not correct anything that sounds remotely similar :)
I recall the tough decision I had to make, in certain circles- Dispite the nastalgic and very personal nature of using a person's real name, I was forced to degrade such a name into a simple two character abbreviated nickname- UJ...
Sometimes it just has to be done. Like-in-kind, I've been called millions of names including Even, Kevin, Quevin, Polar Bear, etc. When I was young even Evan was too difficult for many. I suppose that maybe there is some hope for your name too, my friend.
U-"Jewel"
and then ppl wonder why i abbreviate it to a way where its not a problem for anyone.
I was thinking about another variation that might be simple for the tongue : "OOZE through the WALL"
Gives the feeling of superhero or super-villain with some kind of super power... :)
Muahahehahaheheahaha!!
Huge-Wall Moe_traa!! ;)
I wonder how they'll pronounce my second name... they'll probably give up! :D
Best way is to tell them that it is Huge-Wall. Atleast it is remotely similar. :)
But I wonder for Mr Abhilash. His manger is only able to call eda.. eda eda... U still have hope buddy
Atleast, you all have your first name. US has given me a completely new name which UNK. Any guesses for UNK??
Pretty easy for me. I ask them to try & pronounce Batman's Gotham without an 'h' :-)
haha
try Siddharth!!
and with so many spelling variants available, i dont expect many desis to get it right on the first shot as well!
If they can't pronounce your name i wonder what do they do to the south indian names. I guess they give our south indian brothers a short american name like "Venkatramanan" can be called as "Vik" ;)
So Mr. You-j-wal, imagine what happens to my name? "Sowmyatta Bhardwaj"
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