Yeah, I think it's a clever concept, but it seems almost egotistical to say, "Look, I care enough about how you pronounce my last name to <i>embed a link in my email sig</i>"<p>Many people classically mispronounced my name - it's not a big deal, I move on. If we're not going to be having many conversations where you say my last name, I'm not even going to correct you.
I don't think this will help as much as they hope it will. In my experience, people are generally incapable of pronouncing anything, even when it is said to their face.<p>My name is Nat, which is about as simple a name as you could ask for. But quite often, I will introduce myself, "Hi, I'm Nat", and the response will be "Nice to meet you, Nate". My wife experiences it too (even from her mother!), so I don't think my pronunciation is the problem here.<p>Is this kind of vowel sloppiness more common in the US? Or should I just take the hint and change my name?
I read here comments about personal experiences with mispronounced names and how this is looked upon as having little or no importance. I'm shocked. The name is the first and foremost part of one's identity. Why would it be acceptable to be corrupted for someone's convenience? It's like "...look, I don't fancy your name much, so I shall call you [...]! It's fine with you, right?" I may keep quiet in response, for not having much control over how I'm being called, but no - it is not and it should not be "fine". It's just about the first modicum of mutual respect as interlocutors.<p>The world gets globalized, so please -- when come in contact with the folks living outside your courtyard, be prepared to accept at least some small self-change as consequence.
My problem is not with people mispronouncing my name but modifying it to something easier for them.. No you may not call me Mario, or Martin. Mispronounce it! I don't care, just don't change it to something different!
I actually like that my name is hard to pronounce (as in: I have yet to hear someone pronounce it correctly without being told). It means that I instantly know when the person on the phone doesn't know me.
Mispronouncing someone's name is understandable. What gets me is people misspelling my name... after they've worked with me for years... and seen my name hundreds of times...
I once went to church with a friend of mine for six weeks, because he was shy and didn't want to go to church by himself. We get there, and this woman walks up to me.<p>Her: "What's your name?<p>Me: "Brian"<p>Her: "Brett! Nice to meet you, Brett. What's your last name, Brett?"<p>Me: "(my last name)"<p>Her: "Well, it is SO nice to meet you, Brett Psycho."<p>I was too flabbergasted to respond properly. Even worse, we had the exact same conversation each week for the next six weeks. She couldn't even be bothered to remember my discombobulated name.
Hah! I have a name which I have literally <i>never</i> heard a non-native speaker (of my first language) pronounce correctly.<p>As far as I understand it, the problem isn't so much that people haven't heard you pronounce your own name, it's more to do with the fact(?) that -- unless they've been raised in a similar "sound-environment" -- they literally cannot <i>hear</i> the subtleties of the pronunciation (e.g. tongue/lip positioning, etc.). I've had this experience (in reverse) when trying to pronounce Chinese and Arabic which have subleties which are very foreign to my native language.
About a year ago (or so), I added a parenthetical, <i>(My last name is pronounced "Tate")</i>, to my business cards and email sig block. I've had several people comment approvingly.<p>That said, I do wish my German ancestors had changed either the spelling or the pronunciation when they came to the U.S. in the 19th century. I didn't do it myself when I was younger for fear of family disapproval, and by now my professional "brand" is under the existing spelling. Interestingly, my son, who's just starting his career, brushes off my suggestion that he change the spelling.
How HN users will pronounce my full name: Mario César Señoranis ?<p>Some suggest that this feels pretentious to suggest the correct pronunciation, however I always research the correct pronunciation for all persons I'm presented. From my side I like it, is a courtesy, is about good manners.<p>Not getting mad about someone mispronounce your name is courteous as research the correct pronunciation for others name
I mispronounce my own name most of the time. When I'm speaking English (which is 99% of the time I guess) I just use the English pronounciation, because it is easier, and who cares, really?
One thing this solves is the pronunciation of odd spellings of names, and to an extent, names that are foreign to the recipient (e.g. to an anglophone many eastern European and Asian names don't have an immediately decipherable pronunciation from spelling).<p>However, one of the problems it doesn't help with, is that different languages and language families have sounds that are not used in other languages. This means people will still get your name wrong, because they don't necessarily know how to make those sounds, nor do they even know how to hear the subtle distinctions - e.g. the classic r/l confusion, or my own inability to get tones right when trying to learn mandarin words/phrases.<p>I guess what I'm saying is I don't think anyone should expect this to suddenly make everyone pronounce their name perfectly all of a sudden.
Remembers me of "How do you pronounce 'Bjarne Stroustrup?'": <a href="http://www.stroustrup.com/pronounciation.wav" rel="nofollow">http://www.stroustrup.com/pronounciation.wav</a>
Nice, reminds me of a Brian Regan sketch
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQ8BoYEgy1I&t=4m11s" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQ8BoYEgy1I&t=4m11s</a>
I agree that it is strange that we always provide the written form of a name although you cannot unambiguously determine its pronunciation from it (classical take on this: <a href="http://youtu.be/tyQvjKqXA0Y#t=0m19" rel="nofollow">http://youtu.be/tyQvjKqXA0Y#t=0m19</a>). Still, it sounds a bit over the top to have a service dedicated to the purpose of giving links to pronunciations of names.<p>I just provide the IPA for my name on my website, based on the unrealistic assumption that people who need to will read it.
Several languages use compound nouns, proper and common. These cause pronunciation problems when the phrase is read atomically, instead of by parsing. For example, German armbunduhr is easily understood as arm+bund+uhr = clock around arm, or wrist watch. Since I speak languages that also build up compound nouns (e.g; chair = four+legs), I have no trouble recognizing the need to parse in other languages.
Pretty clever idea. My 4-letter nickname, Kyro, gets mispronounced 10 out of 10 times. It's pronounced kero, like hero, but most pronounce it kairo. At first it was irritating, but I later realized it was a great conversation starter. "Kairo, where are you from?" "Egypt" "Haha, like Cairo! Have you been?"<p>Happy it worked out that way...
This is a really nice idea. I was working on a similar project a few years, audioname.com. The trick is in networking with larger social service and building integrations so that people can share their name's pronunciation everywhere that their name is shared, which is unfortunately fragmented across the web at the moment.<p>It would be nice to be able to highlight a name, search for it in this database, and play an audio file from a browser extension, for example. Or from an email client, or a linkedin profile, or wherever. Having to visit this site to look up a name is enough of a barrier that once the novelty wears off, I can't see it being too well used.
I'm noticing some incorrect pronunciations here searching Polish names. At least one Englishy 'W' and some that sound lot more bizarre than they should due to recording issues. Any way to flag these?
Here is something similar, but it uses text rather than voice and only has Indian names so far. <a href="http://www.howdoyousaythatagain.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.howdoyousaythatagain.com/</a>
Sounds like a good way to solve a corner case in speech recognition: speech to text for names. In reverse, it could also improve speech synthesis for personal robots that would speak the names of their users.
I've liked the way some people have mispronounced my name. Answering to a mispronounced name feels like wearing a wig to me; it's fun, and it makes me feel more exotic than I am.
I have an Irish "Mc" prefix name. There's a 50/50 chance someone will pronounce it with the wrong stress, and there is no "correct" way. Just tradition. So that's fun. I don't think this service would help though, since people think they know how to pronounce it.<p><a href="http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/73900/when-does-the-name-prefix-mc-take-stress" rel="nofollow">http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/73900/when-does-t...</a>
I had that as an idea for podcasts. Similar, but different I guess and now the podcasts are mostly gone.
<a href="http://blog.outerthoughts.com/2011/06/say-your-name-idea-for-podcasters/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.outerthoughts.com/2011/06/say-your-name-idea-for...</a><p>Article also links to couple of previous services doing similar things (back then). Let's hope this one is more successful.
Like everything, this will take a bit of time.
Recording your name, attaching to your email signature and allowing people to hear it a few times, in their own comfort and on their own time, will help them to get it eventually.
Once everyone will have their name recorded, it will raise the issue and get people to make an effort and realize it is important.
Now, there is only nothing, so...
My name is simple enough to be pronounced by anyone, at least that's what I thought. Then I realize in the US people had a hardtime remembering it because for them it is unusual.<p>Now I try to pronounce it the American way just so my name isn't the center of the conversation. I get surprised when I make a mistake and tell someone the correct way of pronouncing it and they get right the first time.
There is one advantage in people mispronouncing your name though. In my experience, people within a group tend to converge towards one pronunciation or variation of your name. On a random encounter in public or out-of-the group environment, if someone is addressing you, you know which group he/she is from, based on the pronunciation he/she used.
Orthogonal note: when in doubt how to pronounce someone's name, you can use IVONA Text-to-Speech [1] if you know the origin, or Google Translate for pronunciation (GT often can infer the language but this can be misleading).<p>[1] <a href="http://www.ivona.com/en/" rel="nofollow">http://www.ivona.com/en/</a>
It's impossible for an English speaker to pronounce my last name, whether they heard it before or not. Heck, I can't even pronounce it myself without falling back into German speech mode.<p>But what's more important: it really doesn't matter to me how you pronounce it. Do people care about it that much?
This reminds me of the old recording from Linus[0].<p>> "Hello, this is Linus Torvalds, and I pronounce Linux as Linux!"<p>Does he still pronounce it this way?<p>[0] <a href="http://www.paul.sladen.org/pronunciation/torvalds-says-linux.wav" rel="nofollow">http://www.paul.sladen.org/pronunciation/torvalds-says-linux...</a>
I looked at the Croatian soccer team (since I lived there for a while and speak a bit of the language) and I was disappointed you have the Americanized spellings for the names. For example, it's Ivan Perišić, not Ivan Perisic :-)
Hilarious. I was wondering how to pronounce Dusan this morning and couldn't find out on You Tube.<p><a href="http://namez.com/search?q=dusan" rel="nofollow">http://namez.com/search?q=dusan</a>
My last name looks hard to pronounce so I'd technically be their target, but unfortunately, I'm not sure that I'd actually set this up. Cool idea though!!
This is just pure genius! I have been fighting with people for a long time pronouncing my name. Now, I just put a signature and I'm done explaining!
Honestly this seems really pretentious.<p>My last name is almost impossible. Even people who know me tend to just abbreviate it. Whenever I meet someone new who stumbles over my name. I just smile and say 'Don't worry about it, I said it wrong the first time too.' Then give the correct pronunciation. It's a good way to break the ice.<p>Conversely sending someone a link on how to correctly pronounce your name just screams 'I'm impossible to get along with'.
If you are that sensitive to people pronouncing your name correctly and your name is not bob or chris, leaving the US is probably your best bet.<p>I certainly gave up long ago.
This assumes that, given the right pronunciation, people will be able to pronounce your name correctly. That's just not reality. I've corrected many a person many a time only to have them repeat the same pronunciation back to me as they did before I corrected them two seconds ago. Finally, I just gave up.<p>Now I have two first names.<p>EDIT: Also happens a lot on voicemails, seconds after they've clearly heard my first name pronounced (the last name I don't mind much as it is unusual).