My last name
If I had a complicated last name or one that isn't Portuguese in origin, I would completely understand what my entire family goes through.
But our last name is one of the most common in my country! It's very much Portugeuse, our mother tongue. It's perfectly simple, except for one teeny tiny detail: it's spelling.
Our last name is Sousa. But the most common spell around here is Souza, with a Z. So everywhere we go, we have to specify it's "Sousa with S". ("Sousa com S" in Portuguese.)
In Portuguese, an S between two vogals sounds like a Z, so both spellings produce the exactly same sound.
And these are some of the things that have happened to either me or one of my family over the years:
Seriously, people, S-O-U-S-A. Sousa with S.
On a side note, people working with telemarketing and custumer's services really need to learn phonetic alphabet. I say "Sierra, Oscar, Uniform, Sierra, Alpha" and they have no idea what I'm talking about. It's quite sad, really.
But our last name is one of the most common in my country! It's very much Portugeuse, our mother tongue. It's perfectly simple, except for one teeny tiny detail: it's spelling.
Our last name is Sousa. But the most common spell around here is Souza, with a Z. So everywhere we go, we have to specify it's "Sousa with S". ("Sousa com S" in Portuguese.)
In Portuguese, an S between two vogals sounds like a Z, so both spellings produce the exactly same sound.
And these are some of the things that have happened to either me or one of my family over the years:
- We say "Sousa with S" and the person totally ignores it and writes "Souza" anyway;
- The person gives me the "I'm not stupid look", assuming we meant the first letter and spells it wrongly;
- Ice said "... Sousa with S", the person wrote on the paper "Souza com" then looked up at her and asked what came after it. (I saw it with my own eyes!)
Seriously, people, S-O-U-S-A. Sousa with S.
On a side note, people working with telemarketing and custumer's services really need to learn phonetic alphabet. I say "Sierra, Oscar, Uniform, Sierra, Alpha" and they have no idea what I'm talking about. It's quite sad, really.