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muckefuckWhat is it with Americans and names?
Last night, we saw the film Morvern Callar. The title is the name of the main character. At one point, soon after she checks into a hotel in Andalucia, an American employee comes by to greet her and her roommate. He's reading their names off a printout and is simply incapable of getting 'Morvern' right, no matter how hard Morvern's friend tries to correct him. (Admittedly, her dense Glaswegian does not make her the most helpful informant.) Since it's a British film, those Americans with a persecution complex could take this as just another swipe at "stupid Yanks". But I've seen an identical scene played out so many times IRL that it didn't strike me as the least bit false or gratuitous.
Maybe I'm being unfair and maybe other cultures are as bad as we are with unfamiliar names, but that hasn't been my experience so far. I don't think is a question of exposure, intention, or cultural insensitivity, since we have all of those in spades. Fortunately, there's a convenient scapegoat in our educational system. I'm a partisan of phonics and I think a great deal of trouble could be saved if more people had been taught to sound out strange sequences of letters bit by bit.
But they weren't; they were taught to guess. And it shows. For example, in the film, the greeter keeps returning to forms like "Merville". There's clearly no l anywhere in the name, but he's familiar with many names ending in -ville and none ending in -vern, he sees a v, so he just supplies the rest of the syllable reflexively. My name contains a (Low) German element meaning "bridge" which has several letters in common with the much more frequent element meaning "mountain". So people constantly guess wrong.
I also suppose embarrassment contributes to confusion. Most people realise that it's somewhat insulting to mangle someone's name, so they try earnestly to guess correctly in one or two tries, getting so flustered in the process that they ignore cues. It's ironic: They want to nail the pronunciation quickly, so they don't slow down and sound it out or repeat after the speaker. The result is that they still don't have it right after half-a-dozen attempts.
Greater knowledge of foreign languages would help as well, but I know that's entirely wishful thinking. I don't mean that if everyone knew French they'd get French names right. Just learning another language well, whatever it is, teaches you that simply because words or sounds seem similar, it doesn't mean they're the same. There's plenty of bad language instruction out there, but good teachers get their students to learn to listen.
So is there any hope? I don't think so, not in this postliterate world. Why do you think I chose the nickname "Da"?
Last night, we saw the film Morvern Callar. The title is the name of the main character. At one point, soon after she checks into a hotel in Andalucia, an American employee comes by to greet her and her roommate. He's reading their names off a printout and is simply incapable of getting 'Morvern' right, no matter how hard Morvern's friend tries to correct him. (Admittedly, her dense Glaswegian does not make her the most helpful informant.) Since it's a British film, those Americans with a persecution complex could take this as just another swipe at "stupid Yanks". But I've seen an identical scene played out so many times IRL that it didn't strike me as the least bit false or gratuitous.
Maybe I'm being unfair and maybe other cultures are as bad as we are with unfamiliar names, but that hasn't been my experience so far. I don't think is a question of exposure, intention, or cultural insensitivity, since we have all of those in spades. Fortunately, there's a convenient scapegoat in our educational system. I'm a partisan of phonics and I think a great deal of trouble could be saved if more people had been taught to sound out strange sequences of letters bit by bit.
But they weren't; they were taught to guess. And it shows. For example, in the film, the greeter keeps returning to forms like "Merville". There's clearly no l anywhere in the name, but he's familiar with many names ending in -ville and none ending in -vern, he sees a v, so he just supplies the rest of the syllable reflexively. My name contains a (Low) German element meaning "bridge" which has several letters in common with the much more frequent element meaning "mountain". So people constantly guess wrong.
I also suppose embarrassment contributes to confusion. Most people realise that it's somewhat insulting to mangle someone's name, so they try earnestly to guess correctly in one or two tries, getting so flustered in the process that they ignore cues. It's ironic: They want to nail the pronunciation quickly, so they don't slow down and sound it out or repeat after the speaker. The result is that they still don't have it right after half-a-dozen attempts.
Greater knowledge of foreign languages would help as well, but I know that's entirely wishful thinking. I don't mean that if everyone knew French they'd get French names right. Just learning another language well, whatever it is, teaches you that simply because words or sounds seem similar, it doesn't mean they're the same. There's plenty of bad language instruction out there, but good teachers get their students to learn to listen.
So is there any hope? I don't think so, not in this postliterate world. Why do you think I chose the nickname "Da"?
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no subject
Now, me ... me, I can understand. My last name is double-barrelled, contains a hyphen, and is 12 characters long. Neither of its components are common last names. I'm looking forward to just switching to 'Mason' in May, I can tell you.
no subject
There are actually some advantages to this. There's a pizza place we like to order from that isn't 100% reliable. We've noticed a close correlation between whether someone asks him to spell his name and whether they get the order right. So now, if we get that question, we hang up and call back, hoping to get someone else.
My sister-in-law has an eight-syllable Basque surname that's utterly straightforward if you sound it out. No telemarketer is capable of doing this, however, so she knows immediately when she's got one and can cut their shpiel short. I take advantage of this, too.
no subject
Six, unless I've been mispronouncing it all this time.
No telemarketer is capable of doing this, however, so she knows immediately when she's got one and can cut their shpiel short. I take advantage of this, too.
You can generally tell a telemarketer from the brief pause between the time you say hello and the time they respond. (Presumably there's some sort of automated system that doesn't connect to a telemarketer till it's sure someone's picked up the phone.) Though these days, I just screen any calls that don't identify on Caller-ID via the answering machine. (The only tricky bit is calls from the U of C, since those could either be people I know there or someone who wants donations.)
no subject
I used to hang up whenever I heard that suspicious pause, but I ended up nailing a few hesistant relatives. So now I wait for the inevitable stumble to be sure. Caller ID is an expense I simply can't justify; I think that may well change when I get a mortgage.
Paco
In Spain the common way to deal with unfamiliar names is to pronounce them as if they were Spanish words, so every letter gets pronounced, and pronounced in Spanish. I once spent about 10 minutes trying to figure out who "Jundenbe" was until finally I asked to see it written - John Denver.
-e
Re: Paco
Germans tend to Germanize only Germanic names. For instance, Franzen (the author) is often "Frahntsn", though I assume he himself says "Franzn". Saying "Yone" for "John", however, would get you laughed out of the room by most younger speakers. It would be on a par with calling "Jazz" Yatts. (As everyone knows, it's really "Chäss".)