That's not how you say my name

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● artofmemory.com - Memorizing Names and Faces

I often have trouble remembering people’s names - this is true even when I am trying hard. Even if the name is not “hard”.

I had a co-worker named “Fred” for some reason I had a very hard time remembering his name. I tried and tried. One day it hit me: I pictured him standing next to Fred Flintstone - after that I never forgot. Every time I saw him I pictured a life-sized Fred Flintstone next to him and knew for sure he was Fred.

People are hopeless. I've got an ordinary English first name and surname and they often get one or both wrong. More times than I can just write off as 'one silly person'. I've had at least 10 versions of my surname

The worst thing is when I correct people, they huff and take offence.

I feel like saying: "Excuse me, it's MY name and I deserve to have it pronounced correctly. It's not your place to take offence because YOU made a mistake."

Thier failure to pronounce your name properly could be due to any number of factors: lack of respect or shared concern is one/two of them, but just one/two.

It could be a group mentality thing--either consciously or sub-consciously, they mispronounce it the way others mispronounce it to follow their management or the dominant employees, to fit in, or simply not stand out.

I think it's important to remember that in the U.S. there is a large variety of different dialects and accents, and the way people from any of them hear and pronounce something could vary greatly. It could just be a huge mismatch--as in, they'll never hear the nuances that your trained ears do and/or they'll never seem to master it no matter how hard they try because of what they grew up with or where they live. While almost all of us are born with the ability to master the language(s) we hear and speak first, certain muscles used to make sounds relatively unique to some other languages may atrophy and those doors of opportunity effectively close. Since you're bilingual, you have abilities others simply may not, and depending on the language, never may have. If they think your name is really that unusual, it could be that your pronunciation actually does sound different to them because it is inherently different--they can't hear the resonance that occurs inside your head! Everyone has an accent.

I'm sorry, but the correct pronunciation of your preferred name may never happen--at least not where you are now.

My last name is Italian and every since I was a kid people could never get my last name right even at school, I got use to it.

I imagine there is so much that you are adapting to and accommodating that it's frustrating to you as ONE MORE THING. Why don't folks do the same for us?

I make an effort to pronounce a name as the person themselves does (thinking of African and Indian and even Italian-descent coworkers, Tibetan and Nepalese neighbors). It's sad to me that others don't make that effort. That said, I am a part of communities that can't easily say my name ("sh") and they nickname me ("ch") and that's ok with me. One coworker used my last name b/c he struggled to pronounce my first name and I thought that was cute. He was generally a very kind respectful person, which mattered more to me than my name. People mispell my name all the time even though it's in the email they are sending. LOL lack of attention to detail. Apparently ASD folks are really good with details, and NTs,,, not so much.

People often get my name wrong and I don't even correct them, to be honest. It used to happen more when I was younger, but I think people generally have become more conscious of being respectful of other people's native languages and ethnicities and they try harder. They often spell it wrong as well, and again I don't bother to correct them. I suppose if I thought it was malicious or that they just didn't care it might bother me more, but I know from growing up with several languages that language and pronunciation are harder for some people than for others.

My mother was Italian and I had a friend named Heather as a kid. There was no way that my mother could pronounce her name. My former boyfriend had friends with names like Bob, Bill, Ben, Don... and all those names seemed exactly the same to my mother and she could not keep track of them. We had a friend named Wes and she thought his name was U.S., like the country. And my mother had advanced degrees and had lived in three different countries.

I'm not suggesting you should feel differently about your name being mispronounced (or gotten wrong). Your feelings are valid.

It gets annoying though when the person who got my name wrong takes offence when I correct them. As if I'm the one who made a mistake. People need to learn to own their mistakes.

But I suppose this plays into the well known human (NT?) aversion to cover up all their mistakes at any cost.

For some reason, I cannot say my supervisor's name correctly outloud. I know how to say it, but my brain wants me to say it in my weird way.

To the OP:

What kind of job do you have where coworkers are always calling you by your last name? I've worked at places for over five years and hardly ever, if at all, heard my last name. I was always called my first name. My suggestion is to tell coworkers to call you by your first name.

OUTSIDE the workplace you can give a fake last name if you're ordering pizza, getting your hair done, having a store put some merchandise aside for you, joining a softball or bowling league, etc. I use a fake last name whenever I'm in public UNLESS it's something official like signing up for a utility service, getting a gym membership, getting a store credit card, etc. But for INformal things, just use "Roberts" or "Smith."

There are three ways people have pronounced my last name. There’s the ethnically correct way, which is less common. Then there’s the pronunciation using common English vowel sounds, which is most commonly how it is pronounced. Then there there is the rare but not wholly unusual stupid way, as in I don’t care how it is spelled, why would you ever pronounce it that way?

Where I work there's 3 people with similar (but different!) surnames to mine so I get called every name but my own.
One of them is a high level employee and I continuously recieve emails meant for them with all kinds of official content.
I've even been added into a group chat of 'the bosses' by mistake.
As for my first name, people never pronounce it properly but I've given up correcting people and answer to anything now.