What's in a Name?

[dawn_felagund]

Random note:

Okay, as of five minutes ago, we are going to Bermuda! In March! Bobby and I needed to go somewhere to finish our open water dives for our scuba certifications, and we had promised my sister-in-law Erin to pay for part of a trip someplace cool with us for her 21st birthday. We'd originally considered going back to Puerto Rico, but in

Comments

[frenchpony]

No one ever gets names right. Ever. It's a universal law. No matter how simple the name is, someone will mess it up.

I mean, take my name. French Pony. "French" is actually a name that was relatively popular around the time I was born, though not obnoxiously so. The thing is, most girls named "French" in the mid 70s had it with a fancy little spelling quirk. Now, I'm named "French" after my late bubbe, so Mom and Dad Pony stuck with the simple, common, "Jewish" spelling*. This does not stop people from being clever and using the fancy spelling anyway. Hell, it doesn't stop Granny Pony (other side of the family) from misspelling it on occasion.

"Pony," it seems, is even more difficult. "Pony" is a Yiddish name. It's a common form, one that you'd recognize as Jewish instantly, but not one of the classic Yiddish names. Add to this the fact that the Pony family, when they arrived in America, were all gung-ho to fit in, and they Americanized the pronunciation. You now have a situation where people who see the name can't figure out how to pronounce it, and the only people who spell it right on the first try are Jews. There is a German pronunciation, and we allow native German speakers to use that, so they can spell it when they hear it, but it's still not quite ours.

Occasionally, I wish I had a nice simple name like Cohen. But then, I'm told that even that name gets mispronounced and misspelled. You just can't win. One reason I'm glad to be in academia is that college professors can have their students address them by their given names if they want. I'd be much happier having my students call me "French" than have to endure endless stumblings over "Professor/Dr. Pony."

*This being the most obvious transliteration of the particular combination of Hebrew letters that make up the original.

[ssotknapsack]

Occasionally, I wish I had a nice simple name like Cohen. But then, I'm told that even that name gets mispronounced and misspelled.

I'd imagine the same people who called my sister "Don" growing up would call you "Cone" in that case. ;)

[frenchpony]

David Ives wrote a wonderful short play called "The Universal Language," from the collection All In The Timing, featuring two characters, Don and Dawn.

[dawn_felagund]

I can believe that any name is mispronounced. Both my first name and my last name are nouns in the English language that are very common, and when I was young, no one said my last name properly. There was another girl a year ahead of me in school whose last name was one letter different from mine, and everyone called me by her name. My elementary school had 400 kids across five grades and kindergarten, so it was one of those places where everyone knew everyone, and they still said my name wrong.

And--like Sharon said--I did get routinely called Don and--once--John. Now I wasn't a pretty kid, but I don't think I was easily mistaken for a boy!

I can only imagine what you went through with a Yiddish name. Luckily, there is only one spelling for "Dawn."