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I have a hyphenated last name and no middle name.
My grandfather died a few days before I got married and he didn't have a middle name. I also didn't want to lose my last name, as it's been a part of my identity for my whole life. So when I got married, I legally changed my name by taking away my middle name and making my last name hyphenated (well, spaced, actually. legally, there's no hyphen, just the two last names).
When people shorten my last name (and always in favor of my husband's name) it pisses me off because that is not my name if you shorten it.
Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
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" will never hyphenate my last name - Pilkington is simply too long to tack anything else on to it."
Ummm... Pilkington-Smith is a pretty common name around here Pretty sure I've heard other names tacked on as well. Pilkington-Smith is the family name though; it's not a combination of parents names. Maybe we hear about England's upper classes all too often though, as they seem to often have hyphenated names. Saint-John is the tricky one for me... it's pronounced Sinjon
"Oh, if I were introduced to someone as such and such, I wouldn't presume. I was speaking more of when you have to try and pronounce someone's name after seeing it written down but before you hear it pronounced. The whole bit about chopping one part off was a little tongue in cheek on my part. [Smile] " So how do you get on when you've seen someone's Christian name written down before you've heard it pronounced? Do automatically say Cah-Ren or Car-Ren when you see Karen on the page?
Posts: 315 | Registered: Jun 2002
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Stacey, where is "around here"? Are you in England?
It's an English name - maybe that means over there people don't panic at the sight of it. That would be nice. Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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Well, clearly the same problem exists with non-hyphenated names. I don't mean to give the impression that it's just people with hyphenated names.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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" On one hand I think its moderately ridiculous that people draw from a pool of names that change by the decade with few lasting more then a century ." You mean like: Peter? John? Mathew? Sarah? Posts: 315 | Registered: Jun 2002
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For what it's worth, I expect you could go either way and still be polite, Storm Saxon. A lot is in the delivery.
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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quote:Originally posted by stacey: Do automatically say Cah-Ren or Car-Ren when you see Karen on the page?
Neither. I'd pronounce that as "KAIR-uhn"
Storm, I've noticed the same thing that Squick is talking about. I'm sorry that you've got something going on in your life that is impacting you in that way.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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I hope it gets better soon, Storm Saxon. (I, too, had noticed this.)
I've been through periods of extreme irritability, and it tends to flood all aspects of my life. There was no getting away from it -- not in dreams, not at play, and certainly not at work. Like having chronic pain. The worst part was that pretty soon I'd start forgetting what life could be like without it.
On the other hand, it made things like road rage and other extremes of behavior much more understandable to me.
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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My brother changed his last name to his wife's. We haven't talked about it, so I don't know his reasoning, but I suspect the fact that our family name is impossible to pronounce and spell at the same time (despite being only five letters long) might have something to do with it.
When I got married, I'd already legally changed my last name to something else I liked (see above comment about impossible to spell and pronounce), so I added Fahim's last name on to the end, much like mackillian. No hyphen, just a space.
Socially, I'll go by his last name - it's easier. Professionally, I go by mine. This way, there are no hassles, especially at the bank, if/when I get cheques (for example) with either last name.
Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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I didn't like my previous middle name, so I moved my maiden name into my middle name slot. I'm actually quite fond of my name now. I had easier-to-spell choices, though; every single one of my names (except for the discarded middle name) is difficult to spell, and at least moderately difficult to pronounce.
Posts: 4077 | Registered: Jun 2003
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Hmm. That should've been "I had NO easier-to-spell choices."
While a portion of my sense of identity is tied up in my first name, the bulk of it is attached less to my name(s) and more to ...other things. The name is just a tiny bit of that, a shorthand. And I didn't think of the middle name as "me" at all.
Posts: 4077 | Registered: Jun 2003
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You're talking about my brother? Well, I was surprised - he's not exactly the most open guy around, ya know? He's the family redneck complete with 4x4 and rifle rack... Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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I don't have a hyphenated last name; I have two last names. It's the norm in my culture and it has been for hundreds of years (and we don't have dozens of names to show for it, contrary to the earlier post!) The custom in most hispanic cultures is you get your father's last name and your mother's maiden name. Honestly, I've always thought this was really cool.
Now, in practice, I just use my father's last name like most other Americans. My name is hard enough without adding to it. As for naming children, and not having tons of names, they way it works for is is my children would have my last name followed by my wife's father's last name. My mother's last name and my mother-in-law's last name would be lost to the children at that point, but then, they would have been anyway, right? At least we kept it around for an extra generation. The "family unity" is still there, because we would all still have my last name (i.e., my father's last name). We just would have different "second" last names.
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Storm Saxon: Pardon my ignorance, but why do people use them?
Because they want to.
quote: Some of them can get quite long. Is it expected that people try and pronounce the whole thing or what?
Yes.
Before I got married, my last name was Grant-Ricks. I used the last names of both my mother and father, who were divorced. I chose this name when I was seven because I wanted to be a writer and thought that two last names would look better on a book cover than just one. I still intend to write under that name if I ever get published, but probably without the hyphen.
Posts: 1006 | Registered: Jun 2006
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By the way, just about everybody had a much easier time pronouncing my hyphenated last name (Grant-Ricks) than they do pronouncing my married last name (Mistretta). So hyphenation does not equal difficulty in pronounciation.
I have a friend whose last name is now Minkiewicz-Breunig. I dare you to even try to pronounce that one correctly! I'm not sure even she can some of the time. She kept the Minkiewicz part after she married because she was widely known in her profession by that very easy-to-spot name - but her name was no easier to pronounce before she hyphenated it; it just gained more syllables after.
Posts: 1006 | Registered: Jun 2006
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She's Sara MB, or Mink, no one says Minkiwicz- Breunig. And I'm sure I've linked her site on here before.
Posts: 5362 | Registered: Apr 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Megan: Hmm. That should've been "I had NO easier-to-spell choices."
While a portion of my sense of identity is tied up in my first name, the bulk of it is attached less to my name(s) and more to ...other things. The name is just a tiny bit of that, a shorthand. And I didn't think of the middle name as "me" at all.
Interesting. I have a very common last name, Baxter, but I think it means a lot to my dad's side of the family. I genuinely think my dad would be upset if I changed my last name.
quote: I don't have a hyphenated last name; I have two last names. It's the norm in my culture and it has been for hundreds of years (and we don't have dozens of names to show for it, contrary to the earlier post!) The custom in most hispanic cultures is you get your father's last name and your mother's maiden name. Honestly, I've always thought this was really cool.
Now, in practice, I just use my father's last name like most other Americans. My name is hard enough without adding to it. [Smile] As for naming children, and not having tons of names, they way it works for is is my children would have my last name followed by my wife's father's last name. My mother's last name and my mother-in-law's last name would be lost to the children at that point, but then, they would have been anyway, right? At least we kept it around for an extra generation. The "family unity" is still there, because we would all still have my last name (i.e., my father's last name). We just would have different "second" last names.
That actually sounds pretty cool, kind of keeping the wife's side of the family in the equation for a while.
Plus, it's all in Spanish, which seems to be pretty much tailor made for just stringing a bunch of words together so they flow.
Plus, it's fairly phonetic, so it's usually pretty easy to spell.
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*amused* It's kind of interesting that people seem to focus on the original post to the exclusion of everything else I've written.
O.K., I get that you guys with hyphenated last names want them to be used, but I am actually curious about what the forum consensus is on difficult to pronounce names, hyphenated or not. Do you think it's more polite that people ask to begin with how to pronounce it, or do you expect them to at least make an attempt?
The reason that I ask this is that this problem comes up with some frequency. People get irritated if their name isn't pronounced correctly or if someone asks how their name is spelled. Of the two, it seems like people get way more irritated if their name is mispronounced. That's part of the reason that, before this thread, I've kind of been leaning towards that it's better to ask first.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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I've got an extremely difficult to pronounce and spell last name . . . and I honestly don't know the answer to your question. I'll have to do some soul-searching to come up with one.
My off-the-cuff reply is that I won't get annoyed with people who attempt to pronounce it and get it wrong, with some notable exceptions. Chief among these is that if you somehow think that my last name seems to you like it should be pronounced like an insult or a slur, you should ask me before you say it that way. I also encourage people to attempt to use the letters that are actually there, instead of an entirely different set of letters. Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote:I get that you guys with hyphenated last names want them to be used
*nods* Yeah, since mine are spaced, I'm already not included.
quote:I am actually curious about what the forum consensus is on difficult to pronounce names, hyphenated or not. Do you think it's more polite that people ask to begin with how to pronounce it, or do you expect them to at least make an attempt?
With my born-with impossible to spell/pronounce name, I was more amused at attempts than anything else. The only people who ever got it right were people who knew people with the last name. Even after corrections, it was extremely unlikely that anyone would be able to spell/pronounce on the first five tries.
Either way, I didn't care. Although, honestly, I laughed a lot. Not AT people, but at the circumstances. And occasionally made fun of the really obnoxious ones. But if someone was trying, either way, then it was fine.
I mean, seriously, I KNOW my name was difficult to pronounce/spell. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out. Of course everyone's gonna mess it up. So what? Carry on...
Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Hmmmm. My last name has all of five letters in it, but people don't actually believe it could BE my last name, so they mispronounce it in a wide variety of ways.
My former husband absolutely refused to hyphenate his last name (or change it) along with me, and since I am the last of that name for this particular line, I didn't want to change to his, so we both kept our original last names . . . which was a bone of contention pre-marriage, all through marriage, and post-marriage. Except for me, since it meant I didn't spend lots of time and some money changing my name to his and then back to mine.
If you can discreetly confirm the pronunciation of said name, Saxy, I'd do so -- before the introductions. Save the embarrassment for other things, y'know.
And for what it's worth, I don't think you're any crankier than usual -- but I'm always cranky, and you're always nice to me, so I'm probably prejudiced, anyhow.
P.S. Would you consider fixing the spelling in the thread title? Posts: 5609 | Registered: Jan 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Icarus: I also encourage people to attempt to use the letters that are actually there, instead of an entirely different set of letters.
My last name is actually very easy to pronounce and is quite phonetic, but people insist on adding letters (usually an "n" for some reason). That annoys me a bit, but I don't make a big deal out of it.
My first name is very common, but my mother gave me a less common spelling (Lorie). Again, it never bothers me much, except a while ago I was going through old school records (report cards, academic awards, etc) and my first name was misspelled on every last one of them. (Lori) I mean, it's not like they didn't have my official records or anything. The vital records department for the great state of Idaho spelled it wrong on my youngest daughter's birth certificate and the state of Hawaii wouldn't accept it when we went in to get her learner's permit at the DMV, so I had to send in a notarized "change" along with "proof" of the correct spelling (in case I'm wrong or something). Ironically, one of the things they would accept as proof was school records, which of course, were all wrong. Fortunately, my driver's license is correct, but it wasn't at first - they spelled it wrong and I had to have them change it. Posts: 2069 | Registered: May 2001
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My younger daughter's name is spelled wrong all over the place, including on many of the adoption records. I have been unable to e-file most of the last few years, because the IRS is convinced I am spelling it wrong. Every year I go through a rigamarole to fix it, and every year it ends up still wrong. I have not attempted to file yet this year; guess we'll see.
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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I'll admit I don't have a lot of patience in particular for teachers who do not learn to spell and develop a reasonably close pronunciation for the name of every child they teach (within a reasonable amount of time). I mean, if there's a disability or something, I guess I can be more understanding, but if I can manage to learn the names of 150 kids each year, usually within the first week of school, my kids' teachers should dang well be able to learn the names of 30. (And I don't have a good memory, for names or for anything else--except spelling.)
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Shan: Hmmmm. My last name has all of five letters in it, but people don't actually believe it could BE my last name, so they mispronounce it in a wide variety of ways.
My former husband absolutely refused to hyphenate his last name (or change it) along with me, and since I am the last of that name for this particular line, I didn't want to change to his, so we both kept our original last names . . . which was a bone of contention pre-marriage, all through marriage, and post-marriage. Except for me, since it meant I didn't spend lots of time and some money changing my name to his and then back to mine.
If you can discreetly confirm the pronunciation of said name, Saxy, I'd do so -- before the introductions. Save the embarrassment for other things, y'know.
And for what it's worth, I don't think you're any crankier than usual -- but I'm always cranky, and you're always nice to me, so I'm probably prejudiced, anyhow.
P.S. Would you consider fixing the spelling in the thread title?
Thanks, Shan...I think.
*squints at thread title* You are pulling Storm's leg, I believe.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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The chip on the shoulder means someone's spoiling for a fight. Apparently when people were daring someone to fight them, they would actually place a chip of wood on their shoulder. If the would-be opponent knocked it off, the fight was on. At least, that's how it worked in The Great Brain series. Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Icarus: I'll admit I don't have a lot of patience in particular for teachers who do not learn to spell and develop a reasonably close pronunciation for the name of every child they teach (within a reasonable amount of time). I mean, if there's a disability or something, I guess I can be more understanding, but if I can manage to learn the names of 150 kids each year, usually within the first week of school, my kids' teachers should dang well be able to learn the names of 30. (And I don't have a good memory, for names or for anything else--except spelling.)
To be fair, I think there are some people who are...not very facile with their tongues, shall we say? For instance, my last name 'Baxter' gets mispronounced somewhat frequently, and as for spelling, people ask me how to spell it *all* the time.
I can only imagine the nightmare that people with, uh, more difficulter names have.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Tatiana: The chip on the shoulder means someone's spoiling for a fight. Apparently when people were daring someone to fight them, they would actually place a chip of wood on their shoulder. If the would-be opponent knocked it off, the fight was on. At least, that's how it worked in The Great Brain series.
Thanks.
On a related note, I do know that when people 'cross the line', that may or may not refer to people actually making a line in the sand in front of them and then daring the other person to step over it towards them.
(Saw it on Bugs Bunny.)
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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If it were a serious impediment, I'd be sympathetic. But like I said, I struggle to learn names and just about everything else memorizational, and I manage it. It really is hard for me, and I describe myself as bad with names. At my job, I just try harder.
(I haven't succeeded at that 50-State thing yet, but if it were really important to me, I'd manage to get adequate at it.)
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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First or last, it doesn't bother me when people mispronounce it on the first go, never having heard it before. Once I tell people how to say the names, though, I do like for them to continue saying them that way.
The REALLY funny thing is the reaction to my first name.
This happens nearly every single time. I really don't know why; it's like they can't process that a name they know how to spell might be pronounced differently than they usually hear it.
Posts: 4077 | Registered: Jun 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Storm Saxon: So, put you in the 'doesn't matter' column?
Yup.
quote:Originally posted by Storm Saxon:
quote:Originally posted by Shan: P.S. Would you consider fixing the spelling in the thread title?
*squints at thread title* You are pulling Storm's leg, I believe.
Squint again, honey.
How embarrassing! I really do know how to spell 'hyphenated'. It's weird that my brain supplied the missing 'h' in the title when I looked last night.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Shan: P.S. Would you consider fixing the spelling in the thread title?
*squints at thread title* You are pulling Storm's leg, I believe.
Storm. Thanks for fixing the title, dear. Are your eyes unstuck from squinting, yet?
Edit to add: Don't be embarrassed. I drove by the place I was supposed to pick a colleague up three times without seeing it just last Friday, sure I was forever lost. I went in circles for 30 minutes. That's embarrassing. A missing letter? Pshaw. *smile* Her last name is at least pronounceable and not hyphenated. *grin*
quote:Originally posted by maui babe: My first name is very common, but my mother gave me a less common spelling (Lorie). Again, it never bothers me much, except a while ago I was going through old school records (report cards, academic awards, etc) and my first name was misspelled on every last one of them. (Lori) I mean, it's not like they didn't have my official records or anything.
School officials do that a lot. My last name used to be Aaronson, and a guidance counselor once spelled it Erinsohn.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Storm Saxon: For instance, my last name 'Baxter' gets mispronounced somewhat frequently, and as for spelling, people ask me how to spell it *all* the time.
Huh? How do you mispronounce Baxter?
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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You mean like: Peter? John? Mathew? Sarah? ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
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Storm. Thanks for fixing the title, dear. Are your eyes unstuck from squinting, yet? ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
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That's embarrassing. A missing letter? Pshaw. *smile* Her last name is at least pronounceable and not hyphenated. *grin*
