Pronounce three impossible things before breakfast (or, You Can't Take It With You)
How do you cope with names that won't carry over?
I was just talking with arrowwhiskers about names to use in Spanish-speaking settings, since my name is impossible to spell or pronounce in Spanish (or most other non-English languages, sigh). I appear to have three choices:
1. Get as close to my actual name as possible, and explain how it can be written each time.
2. Pick an authentic Spanish name I happen to like and train myself on name-recognition as rigorously as possible before I get plunged into a situation where it's wholly necessary.
3. Pick a word (for instance, an internet pseudonym I've used) that I'll have some recognition on, that transliterates into Spanish reasonably well, even though it's not a name or a word in Spanish (and double-check for unfortunate possible interpretations).
I'm sort of inclined toward option 3. For instance, as far as I can tell from a dictionary/Google-Translate hunt, "Cáliuna" is gibberish in Spanish, but it would be pronounceable gibberish, and I've been using Calluna (which is pronounced pretty much like that) as a pseudonym for....god...over 25 years, so I think I'd have reasonable name recognition on it.
But this must be a fairly common problem, in any language. How have you seen it handled?
I was just talking with arrowwhiskers about names to use in Spanish-speaking settings, since my name is impossible to spell or pronounce in Spanish (or most other non-English languages, sigh). I appear to have three choices:
1. Get as close to my actual name as possible, and explain how it can be written each time.
2. Pick an authentic Spanish name I happen to like and train myself on name-recognition as rigorously as possible before I get plunged into a situation where it's wholly necessary.
3. Pick a word (for instance, an internet pseudonym I've used) that I'll have some recognition on, that transliterates into Spanish reasonably well, even though it's not a name or a word in Spanish (and double-check for unfortunate possible interpretations).
I'm sort of inclined toward option 3. For instance, as far as I can tell from a dictionary/Google-Translate hunt, "Cáliuna" is gibberish in Spanish, but it would be pronounceable gibberish, and I've been using Calluna (which is pronounced pretty much like that) as a pseudonym for....god...over 25 years, so I think I'd have reasonable name recognition on it.
But this must be a fairly common problem, in any language. How have you seen it handled?