I started writing this post last October but never finished it. I’m finally digging it out of drafts…
After my Random Rant regarding the mispronunciation of the word “karaoke,” a couple of commenters brought up the topic of people “mispronouncing” their own last names.
I admit that I am one of those people who goes around and “bastardizes” my own last name by pronouncing it the way it’s spelled, instead of the way it is supposed sound (in Chinese). I know how it’s really pronounced, but I really hate having it misspelled more than I hate having it mispronounced. Is that silly or what?
Assuming your last name is of Asian origin, do you pronounce it as it’s spelled or as it’s supposed to sound?
RamenGrrl tipped me off to a website that CalPoly Pomona developed to help the campus community more accurately pronounce some common Asian first and last names. In some cases, they provide helpful hints, phonetic pronunciations, and/or sound samples spoken by native speakers. Native speakers who were/are Cal Poly Pomona students provided all sound samples (in .wav format) for Cambodian, Cantonese, Mandarin, Filipino, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Thai, and Vietnamese names.
I listened to a lot of the Mandarin pronunciations… accurate and pretty cool. What do you think?
What next?
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21 Comments to “Random Poll: Do you pronounce your last name the way it’s spelled or the way it’s supposed to sound?”
yoko wrote:
My last name in Japanese is pronounced with the first syllable at a high tone, the second and third syllables lower. I never pronounce it that way here- I accent the second syllable instead. However, I will correct someone if s/he pronounces the second syllable with a short o– I always pronounce it with a long o.
My real first name is actually both English and Japanese, so I'll pronounce it as an English name when speaking English, Japanese when speaking Japanese.
Posted on 24-Jun-08 at 6:19 am | Permalink
ancient one wrote:
I pronounce my last name the way it is spelled, which is also the way is supposed to be pronounced. Tagalog uses the Roman alphabet (the old syllabary disposed of by the Spanish colonizers). The only problem is that the Tagalog pronunciations are not same as typical English ones so my last name is constantly mispronounced in English.
Posted on 24-Jun-08 at 7:04 am | Permalink
YvesPaul wrote:
I'm from Hong Kong and have a French background, so my last name is spelled in a Vietnamese way… It's exhausting to correct everyone I meet how my last name should be pronounced, so I let it go. If I know they are addressing me it makes no different anyhow.
Some people would go out of their way to give themselves an English first name for the convenience. I might just change my last name to Smith or Doe, way less hassle that way… lol.
Posted on 24-Jun-08 at 7:32 am | Permalink
Efren wrote:
Heh, the correct Filipino way to pronounce my last name is to break it up into two syllables with an upgoing accent on the last syllable–but almost everyone pronounces it the stereo maker's way (even though I'm not Indian). Most people with American accents try to put a French spin on it when they try to break it up into two syllables, and in that case, I'd prefer the stereo speaker pronounciation. *sigh*
Posted on 24-Jun-08 at 9:50 am | Permalink
josh wrote:
My family name (not really my family name but a name adopted by my grandfather to get into the Philippines) is Chua. I prounounce it in a palatable american way because most americans cannot pronounce the TS sound that is replaced by the CH sound. So technically it should be Tsua but no everyone at the immigration office is a linguist.
Most people prounounce it in 2 syllables even though it should just be 1 syllable.
My given name is also the same in chinese and english but everyone just calls me by the english pronounciation.
Posted on 24-Jun-08 at 11:29 am | Permalink
stan fong wrote:
Well, I like to say that i pronounce my last name the proper “Cantonese way” of “Fong”, because in Mandarin, my last name would be “Fang”.
When I used to live in Singapore, they added my Chinese name after my English name, so my name would inadvertently have a “Fong Fang” in the middle.
Posted on 24-Jun-08 at 11:46 am | Permalink
Jeff C. wrote:
Heh… neither
My Chinese last name is rare and one of those whose pronunciation changes when used as a proper name.
Ergo, it's spelt like the original word (pinyin would be “jie”) but pronounced like “xie”.
Not only that, but my family's from Taiwan, so the bastardized Wades-Giles system was used in its spelling, thus the “j” changes to a “ch”. Almost everyone I meet for the first time pronounces it with a hard “ch”.
And my parents decided to follow with the “synonym” version of our name and use the “long A” pronunciation versus the “eh” ending.
I've seriously been thinking about just using the way it's spelt versus the original pronunciation for business reasons (upper-management never relates the face with the name due to the different pronunciation)
Posted on 24-Jun-08 at 12:34 pm | Permalink
moye wrote:
gosh. the only ppl who pronounce my first name right are my parents, sister and anyone from Japan. i gave up on trying to help others with it back in kindergarten.
Posted on 24-Jun-08 at 12:51 pm | Permalink
phil wrote:
neither. it's spelled mok, but it's pronounced with a long o sound. however, even then the korean pronunciation is different from english, but if they put the long o sound in there, i'm relieved. our family's considered changing the spelling to different variations (moak, moke, moek, actually putting an accent over the o..), but what's the point? no matter how you spell it, if it's not a common “white” name, someone's always gonna mess it up!
Posted on 24-Jun-08 at 1:39 pm | Permalink
Jesse! wrote:
The last time I was called in for jury duty in San Francisco, we had to wait on some guy named “Zang”, having studied Mandarin, I so knew the guy's name was spelled in pinyin as Zhang which is pronounced like Jong (or Jahng, swallowed J and a long A), definitely not rhyming with “bang”.
Finally they found him but I was wonder if he's like hearing this name called that certainly not his… and then wondering why everyone was so mad at him for not hearing his name. If I were him, I'd ignore them too… also jury duty? gross!
Posted on 24-Jun-08 at 5:42 pm | Permalink
Noellium wrote:
My last name is Japanese, with an “ye” in it, which is actually supposed to be pronounced as “eh” not “yeh”. My immediate family, relatives and myself pronounce it as it actually is pronounced (maybe not with the correct tone/accent, but we do pronounce correctly
). Anyone who finds it too hard to pronounce tend to say the e as a long e (”ee”), which I don't mind. Just don't pronounce the y!! :O
(For those who don't know, having the y in front of the e makes it an older spelling.)
First name (Tracey) I think is Greek, and I haven't had problems with people mispronouncing that.
Posted on 24-Jun-08 at 6:41 pm | Permalink
dave41989 wrote:
Wow. I always thought I was the only one with this problem with the mispronunciation of my last name; but yet again, I live in a town where most names are from European descent.
My last name is vietnamese and is 'Ngo.' I always corrected everyone on the way it was pronounced until third grade. My teacher asked if it was pronounced “Nuh-go” and I replied that it was, just because I was too lazy to correct her and everyone else that would have asked me that question in the future. Since then, every person has called me “Nuh-go.”
Posted on 24-Jun-08 at 11:44 pm | Permalink
RayU wrote:
My Japanese last name starts with “ue”, that always trips up people. The most common mangle is making the “e” the long “ee”. On the phone, when I give my last name I immediately continue in the same breath “… that is spelled 'u', 'e'…”
My last name also has 'r', which I pronounce the English way, but I will pronounce it the Japanese flapped 'r' way as needed.
It was some time into elementary school before I learned the Cantonese pronunciation of my middle name. Only a handful of years ago I learned the Mandarin equivalent of the characters.
Posted on 25-Jun-08 at 8:15 am | Permalink
ErnieAtLYD wrote:
Hah. So, my last name is “HSIUNG.” (Pinyin: Xiong, although I usually tell people “Shung.”) I have gotten the following: Hut-Cy Young, Cy Young, Hissy-ung, Shoe, and my personal favorite – SHWING.
To quote John Lin: High School kids can be so cruel.
Posted on 25-Jun-08 at 11:31 am | Permalink
RamenGrrl wrote:
so we have more common japanese family names in our clan, like nishimoto, yamamoto (that's on both sides–no relation) but we also have less common ones that are harder to pronounce. my favorite is all vowels. my mom's. eek. she was so glad to marry into a family with an “easier” japanese surname. of course, everyone spells it wrong and forget saying it! but at least it looks similar to how it's pronounced.
Posted on 25-Jun-08 at 1:34 pm | Permalink
komodo wrote:
Well my father changed his Indonesian last name to a common Muslim last name “Usman” But still, I had the problem of mispronouncing my own last name for more than 10 years of my early life…mostly because I took in what my American teachers or any other adult said. The correct pronounciation is “Oos-mon” (or something like that). But I kept hearing and saying “Us-Maan.” But then when I started pronouncing my surname correctly, everyone misheard me and thought I said, “Guzman” (which is a Hispanic/Latin) last name. I get laughs over how my people try to pronounce my dad's first name…it sounds Japanese..and is pronounced the way it's spelled (heavy on the vowels sound..as if you're using Spanish alphabet)…but I don't know why folks mess it up and add extra letters and syllables.
Posted on 26-Jun-08 at 3:09 pm | Permalink
moye wrote:
That's just like my first name
(the whole eh vs. yeh vs. ee thing)
Posted on 27-Jun-08 at 2:38 pm | Permalink
strayfarce wrote:
I always asked someone if I was pronouncing a non-common name correctly just to make sure I was being respectful of their family name. What always gets me (but I always let it go) is that anytime someone asks how to spell my name they always say “with an e or an ie?” It's neither. Tracy, just Y. I mean, that's the common spelling. At least it always was when I was growing up.
Posted on 28-Jun-08 at 4:37 pm | Permalink
VivianN wrote:
Jeez, you have no idea how annoying it is to hear people say “win” or “nuh/gwin.” My last name is Nguyen, I very common one I guess. It's not pronounced that way. And then I was looking through some random forum at some random website, and this guy said there's to many -ng at vietnamese names like Ngo or Nguyen. S/He's like, -ng is pronounced weh and that makes Nguyen, “wehn.” FAIL! I guess the reason why people can't say vietnamese names are because there's accents or stressed or something like that. Nguyen has a -ee kind of sound into it. Weeng sort of. -ee is stressed? My grammar is so bad and yet, I'm passing my English classes – _ – I stopped fixing people's mistakes since first grade. Let the principal think she's pronouncing right. I bet you she still think she is.
Posted on 26-Sep-09 at 9:55 am | Permalink
ninaharuno wrote:
Wow, you have the last name 'Ngo' too? I have that last name, and it's always so irritating having to remind people on how to say your own last name. They say things like 'no' or 'nose' or even 'nuh-go' too. So far, only my best friend can say my last name but it took her two years.
Posted on 21-Oct-09 at 8:05 pm | Permalink
Jinho wrote:
I don’t understand:
JUN
It’s rather easy to say.
But can anybody say it?
No.
June, Jung, Yun, Yung….Yoon? How do they get Yoon? Or anything with a Y for that matter?
And my first name.
It is a Korean name as well. It is rather easy. I am not saying that just because I am Korean and can pronnounce it properly, but when I look from another educated person’s point of view, it IS easy!
I always manage to get crazy renditions of my name every semester and year when new classes begin.
I honestly don’t understand.
It’s as if the whole non-Asian population thinks that there is some magic involved with pronouncing Asian names. I understand if it was more complicated such as a Korean or Chinese name with X’s for example, but mine is JUN!
How hard can that be?
Apparently extremely.
Posted on 09-Nov-09 at 5:12 pm | Permalink
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