Nominal

Of all the things to wax cranky about, students who don't care about how you pronounce their names are, I fear, rather low on my list--somewhere below missing dry erase markers, non-functioning thermostats in winter, and rattling air conditioners.  I've actually given up on getting people to pronounce my surname "correctly"; the adverb there is in quotation marks because there are two pronunciations for it, and my particular branch of the family uses the rarer one (of course).  At this point, whichever pronunciation comes out is fine with me.  My Super Correction Button only gets mashed when somebody sticks an "n" in the middle of it.  Because there is no "n" there. 

Comments

[tatiana.larina]

Can't resist quoting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaPZZJVDx6Y

[CJColucci]

I serve as a judge for law school moot court competitions. Over the last decade or so, I have seen far more south Asian or African names than you would find in my own law school class. And when they introduce themselves in their opening remarks, they often mumble their names.
Lately, I have made a point of telling them that people of an age to be actual judges did not have classmates with names like yours. Many judges, of course, don't give a damn who you are or how your name is pronounced, but some do, and even the assholes want to choose to be assholes, not end up that way by default. So speak your name loudly and distinctly for the benefit of judges who want to be polite.
To my surprise, no one has ever gotten offended, and some have actually thankled me for the advice.