1. Hint- her name is pronounced “Karen”.

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   1. And I wonder if she says Hispanic names perfectly 100% right, 100% of the time, or does she cause them trauma as well?

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      1. Or Chinese (which given the tonal inflections can be … interesting), or Indian, or Vietnamese, or….

         And lest anyone think Asians have a monopoly on hard-to-pronounce names, Arabic names can be difficult for Westerners. So can Irish/Gaelic, French, Native American/Inuit — and as the post mentioned — Hebrew, German, Welsh, and Irish/Gaelic names.

         But I’m sure she’s a linguistic savant who gets ALL of those perfectly correct, every single time, right?

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2. Bite me, sob sister, sincerely Jolie. Although my dad COULD have picked better.

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3. LOL My parents are Irish immigrants so my name is Deirdre, my whole life people called me Deetra, Dee-ay-dra, Debbie, Diane, and I would correct them but after a while if they kept calling me that I did not really give a crap. I would NEVER be a big giant Queen Baby like this twat. I thought Koreans (OMG HERE COMES A STEREOTYPE! GET TO YOUR SAFE SPACE QUICK!!) were tough people? Obviously she has been way too Americanized… Deirdre is a pretty common name in Ireland, and my mom wanted to name me Clare but my father was rather insistent. The best part was when I would give my name over the phone and even better when someone had to write it down! You would think the whole country was illiterate! Did I ever complain about my Super White Privilege? No, I have an Irish Gaelic name in an English speaking country so I just sucked it up, honestly never thought twice about it. How the FUCK can people be so whiny?? So self-absorbed? As my father would say (while pulling off his belt) “D’yiz want something to cry about!??!” He would thunder and we kids would scatter.

   Hello, who is calling? Deirdre. “Audrey?” No, Deirdre. “Beatrice?” No, Deirdre. “Andrea?” No, Deirdre. “Judy?” No, friggan Deirdre” Can you spell that for me? LOL no kidding! It no need for tears…jeez.

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   1. Deirdre isn’t too hard — but how about Siobhain or Diarmuid? 🙂

      I’m fortunately to go by my middle name. My first name is Gerard, which is perfectly easy for English speakers to pronounce, but that isn’t the correct Dutch pronounciation.

      The reality is that languages have a collection of phonetic elements that vary wildly. Some are easy for others to handle, some are not, and in any case if you don’t know how you will get it wrong. I’m told that Irish Gaelic spelling is very regular — but Is sure don’t know the patterns. For that matter, Chinese Pinyin is regular also, but “x” and “q” etc. do not mean what Westerners think.

      For real fun, try San or Xhosa names, the ones with punctuation marks in the middle of the word. Or read “Practical Phonetics” by Catford to see just how hard the sound inventory of a language can get if you look around the world.

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4. At this point, everyone but White people are looking for some reason to complain and of course to blame White people because that is how they are being directed. They are doing it to get attention, and we are the only race that is perfectly fine to openly insult in any way, however heinous. So White people had BETTER start doing something about I before we end up like the White people, mostly Boers, of SA. Because that is the goal. It IS. And they are making pretty decent progress, as most Whites in America are putting BLM signs in their front yards. Better wake up.

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5. Yeah… Big Whooptido.

   My last name is 6 letters in a consonant-vowel-consonant consonant-vowel-consonant format, that rhymes with a popular German baked salted treat that tastes great with mustard. Can accept the V or the W sound. Simple. Wetzel. Right?

   Friggin Englishers can’t pronounce my last name worth a darn. Want to put an ‘i’ or a ‘y’ or something else somewhere in it and screwing it all up.

   WET ZEL

   So?

   And what Asians, mostly Koreans and Chinese (both Nationalist and Communist) do to that is unbelievable.

   But do I get my underwear in a twist? Nope.

   As to pronunciations, I try to learn how to pronounce other peoples’ names, because it is the polite thing to do. But I don’t expect to have people get all assed-up about it if my accent is slightly off.

   What a twit.

   Try pronouncing Welsh names, or some of the Eastern European throat-stranglers, correctly. Makes oriental names seem positively passive. Well, except for Mongolian names. Those require a lot of throat hocking noises…

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6. Just introduce yourself as Willy Lancaster. That should shut her up.

   My first and last name are two fairly common words in the English language, and they get misspelled and mispronounced on a weekly basis. Even my new work ID has a spelling error.

   She isn’t special.

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   1. My (real) last name is two simple English word concatenated. And some folks have problems.

7. I am english and itallion, my last name is itallion. I have had 4 , FOUR people pronounce it right the first time they saw it. The ones who ask me to spell “that” I tell them T. H. A. T. I have gotten several to actually write down t h a t. When they ask if it’s Itallion I say no. Its Jewish…. not everyone is named smith or brown…its America. Not everyone is hyper hysterical either.

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8. Ten gets you one she’ll also call you a racist if you object a native speaker of an Asian language butchering your Anglo-type name.

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   1. You’ll find that asians (especially Korean, Japanese and Chinese are very much low level racists when it comes down to it…They are all pretty good people but they neither trust nor consider yourself their equal in many cases..The Japanese language enshrines that racism in one word….Gaijin which is their word for stranger/foreigner….and enemy. In Korean society, a Korean woman married to a foreigner is considered one step below a hooker. And the traditional consideration of the Chinese as being a victim of western abuses (some of it rightfully so even though they are guilty of killing more of their own than any westerner ever did) is a given. This diatribe about honoring the name of a family is just one example of this subtle bigotry.
      P.S…I’ve had my name (German, grandfather from the old country) slaughtered and made fun of incessantly over the last 6 decades….get over it. I just automatically spell it out when I’m asked….Most people can’t get it right anyway.

9. So I have a name with more than enough letters due to its French origins. It ends in “gne” which gives people here fits. I do not get pissed at people when they cannot correctly say it. As some know from the SW Meet I have a simple way of telling people how to say it. Makes everyone more comfortable. I do not aggravate people, unless they deserve it.

10. She completely ignores (or more likely doesn’t even know) that tons of people coming in through Ellis Island with Russian, Polish, Italian, Welsh, Scottish, etc. names would try to give their name to officials there. In many cases, the immigrants couldn’t read or write English. The officials would anglicize the name as best as they could, write it down and give it back to the immigrant as their new American identity. Anyone doing family tree research and had ancestors come through Ellis Island has learned that. People at the time just accepted the name change as a necessary thing in order to come over here. Simple as that.

    My last name gets butchered so often that when people ask my name, I automatically spell it before they even ask. Then spell it again. Then spell it again. It’s frustrating, but I deal with it. Except with India based call centers. Then I simply scream into the phone “does anyone there speakee English!!”.

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    1. FYI: NOBODY had their name changed in Ellis Island. That’s a myth. The officials spoke many languages. The manifests were filled out at the point of embarkation. HOWEVER, the moment they left Ellis Island, they were free to call themselves anything they wanted to.

11. My first name is “Ian,” a name of Scottish Gaelic origin that first emerged roughly 400 years ago. In the 1960’s it was one of the ten most popular names in the English-speaking world, but has fallen off sharply in popularity since… Although it remains in the Top 50 in the U.K. and Top 100 in the U.S. It’s almost constantly seen on tv or in film as a shorthand way of sayin “this character is a stereotypical nerd but British.”

    It’s basically one of the most British-y names any could have short of “Richard Henry England MacBritisher-McBritainface III.”

    Not one day of my forty years of life has gone by without someone mispronouncing it.

    So, yeah, this ain’t about ethnocentrism or racism.

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12. Like Deirdre, my entire family, save one grandma was Irish.

    My wife isn’t but oddly she’s been instrumental in teaching our kids the culture. She likes it, since it’s very complimentary to her own Cajun culture.

    When our second daughter was born, my wife wanted to name her with an Irish name she heard and liked. I wanted to use the Irish spelling, but she used the 1/2 American version. Even then, most get her name wrong, which she simply corrects.

    Although close but not her name, I wanted to name her Sile. In Irish, this is pronounced “Sheila”. “S” is a SH sound.

    Both Daughters, and son have unique Irish names, with the Irish spelling.’

    There are no Ashleys or Brittanys in our family. Nor Karens.

    My mom grew up, first generation, poor, both her parents gone before age 11. Had to put herself through school and was one tough cookie.

    If this woman told her this, she’d tell her that she should get on her knees and thank God that will all the troubles on the world all she has to whine about is people getting her name wrong.

    BTW I have advice for the ignoramus – Asians have issues with some of the phonetics in our language, just as we have with theirs. It is the way of things. Most of us, if we were taught languages we learned spanish. I told my son Chinese or Russian would be more useful. He took German.

    Last year, I had a German boss. Highly educated, and not being Bavarian, he had a tiny accent that was utterly unique, almost British. When I said my son learned German and could speak it he said

    “Why in the world would someone study German?”

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    1. -quote-Last year, I had a German boss. Highly educated, and not being Bavarian, he had a tiny accent that was utterly unique, almost British. When I said my son learned German and could speak it he said

       “Why in the world would someone study German?”-end quote-

       Ha! I work for a company that’s a subsidiary of a German company. Before COVID, we were expected to travel to the mothership in Germany at least twice a year for face time and training. We speak with our German colleagues daily by phone and in teleconference meetings.

       I’ve been with the company for many years, but shortly after I got hired, I started working on learning some German using Rosetta Stone software.

       When I told my German colleagues that I was trying to learn some German, the response was, without fail WHY?

       Your comment made me laugh out loud. That seems to be a common sentiment among Germans.

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       1. Even more so among the Dutch. German, at least, is spoken by quite a lot of people. It can also serve as a second language to use with many more — a lot of Czechs, in my father’s experience, will admit to knowing German so long as you make it clear you’re not German.
          My youngest sister took German as a foreign language rather than the much more common choice of English (this was in Holland) on the grounds that she wanted to learn a language that had rules, rather than only exceptions. Looking at English spelling I can see her point.

13. “Michelle” should stop hiding behind her American name.

    You want us to learn your name? Use it, and tell us how to say it.

    FFS, I’ve worked with countless Vietnamese, Japanese, Chinese, and even some Koreans. I don’t think I’ve ever met one of them that didn’t use their real names.

    If I had an issue with pronunciation, I’d ask and they’d help.

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14. Okay. I had a buddy in the Navy who was of (If I remember correctly) Czech ancestry. His last name was spelled Pryzwra. (His knickname was Bav…short for “buy a vowel”).

    I challenge Miss butthurt Asian to pronounce his name correctly the first time.

    (it was pronounced “Prizwara”)

    Does anyone else find it ironic that someone who’s family came to America for a better life, is able to be successful and thrive in this society, but still hates it so much that she gets all upset that we don’t all speak Korean fluently?

    I wonder how many native Korean speakers could pronounce a typical “western” name correctly the first time?

15. I went to school with two Korean brothers, Jong Soo and Jong Wan. Those are their given names; I won’t mention their family name here. Later I worked with a lady of Vietnamese heritage named Van Thi (pronounced “Van-TEE” — also just her first name). None of them were ever offended if you mispronounced their names the first couple times.

    Myself, I have a normal English surname … but with a somewhat-uncommon spelling (maybe 10% of families with this name spell it like we do), but that’s enough to throw even native English speakers almost every time. NOBODY spells it right the first time (they assume it’s the “90%” spelling unless we spell it out … and sometimes even then, like we don’t know how to spell our own name!). Hell, we’ve filled out registration forms for events — IN WRITING — and STILL had our printed copies come back wrong!

    Do we get offended? No. We just politely correct people when it matters — medical forms, birth and tax records, anything that needs to match our ID, etc. Most of the time it really doesn’t. Doubly so if it’s a one-off meeting with someone you’ll never see again.

    Look, I get it. You want people to pronounce your name correctly. It’s understandable.

    On the flip side, you also have to understand that people are not infallible, mistakes and mishaps happen, and the best you can reasonably expect is their best reasonable effort.

    If their best effort still doesn’t get it right, rather than getting offended and claiming racism, thank them for trying and have them use your English name. Or better yet, assuming it’s a context that doesn’t matter or a one-time interaction, either roll with it or walk away.

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