Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
A Doug by any other name
Yes, I know Starbuck’s is evil, but we don’t have Peet’s coffee in Bako. The bags, yes, but not the coffee shops. So today while Jake was doing his community service thing (a requirement of his high school — kind of cool, really), I popped down to SB for some iced tea. You know how they like to write your name on the cup? “Doug,” I said, and was passingly dismayed to find in black marker on perspiring plastic, “Dud.”
I’ve been worse over the years. When my friend Stan took me to an auto auction to buy my first car, the guy whose job it was to fill out name tags for visitors wrote “Dug.” Which tickled Stan to no end, of course, and he still tells the story.
But the worst was long ago, waaay back in Hebrew school, which I’ll remind you was a torment I asked for. And you know, despite the various annoyances — my snooty classmates, all of whom acted like their dads made a lot more than mine, which they probably did but how did they KNOW that; the incredibly crappy textbooks, which taught vocabulary but no grammar whatsoever; the complete lack of theological instruction, which is what I’d hoped I’d be getting — the experience was worthwhile. Worthwhile, despite annoyance #4: Israeli teachers who could not for the life of them pronounce the schwa that links my “D” to my “G”. For all my years in Hebrew school, I was forever “Dog.”
Eventually they gave us Hebrew names. Mine was David. A D name is a D name, I suppose, and David suited me fine. For many years, I wanted to change my name to David. And then I had my Bar Mitzvah, no one ever called me Dog again, and I forgot about the whole thing.
I’m too old to change now. But wouldn’t it be cool if we could choose our own names, at our 21st birthday, for example?
D.
From Dog to Dug to Dud. This progression isn’t that promising! Curious – was the chain of people involved non-native English speaking? If there was a lot of background noise, who knows what the cashier heard to say to the barista, who heard Dud. Or maybe no one there can spell. I admit to imagining your Starbucks as similar to the one in Doonesbury right now, even though I don’t think Cali has an open carry law.
At least your last name is straightforward to pronounce (I’m sure people have managed to mangle it). My first name is hugely problematic for Americans, who want to make the i a long i and not a short i. One of the nice things about living in Europe is that no one gets it wrong. My maiden name, which should be straightforward since it is a profession, also proved difficult. No nice schwa. Nope, most defaulted to a long o. Then when telling people my maiden name over the phone, it sounds familiar enough that people think they got it, so don’t check. The v often became a b and the o turned into oo, resulting the worst variant – Gloober. Sigh.
Women do have the fabulous option of dumping their maiden names and mine disappeared like a shot in the dark. My married name is alliterative and no one thinks they know how to spell it, so they listen when I spell it out. Since my first name is a very traditional Orthodox name, it perfectly matches my married name, thus giving me the pleasure of getting interrogated by people from the former USSR wanted to know if my grandparents/parents are Ukranian (this is not necessarily a compliment from Russians) or Belarussians (also not meant as a compliment from Russians or Ukrainains). I get a kick out of replying that I’m mostly German.
You could always go by ‘Dougal’ or ‘Dugald’. That would confuse the shit out of people. If you really wanted to fuck with them, you could change your name to ‘Siobhan’ and tell them it’s an old Jewish name. You could tell them that you’re an Irish Israelite, and that you have secret inside information that the Lost Tribe of Israel actually wound up in Ireland.
My legal last name is hyphenated, and long. (without counting) I think it’s approaching 20 letters. Just the sheer length of the thing causes people’s brains to shut down. I’ve thought about legally changing it to only the last half (which is the one I use publicly most often) but I was born with mine, and my father was born with his, unlike most hyphenated people you meet nowadays, and so I refuse to change it out of bloody-mindedness.
My name is so easy to spell, but more people than not spell it L-U-C-Y, followed by L-U-C-I. The list of misspellers includes good friends, business colleagues, and all my husband’s relatives. When people get it wrong who should be getting it right I do make a mental note of it. When I get a Lucy or a Luci, it feels like a Dud. I am named after both my great grandmother, Lucie, and my grandmother, Lucie, and we all share the same birthday. My name reflects my family’s deep and strong French heritage and I am very proud to have it. Get it right people!
People don’t have problems with Chris, but Rennie, which looks relatively phonetic to me, invariably gets pronounced as ree-nee or ruh-nay.
My dad’s name is Doug, and he has the same problems. In his case, though, the most often misspelling appears to be “Dough”. I guess they hear “dug-uh” or something. Who knows.
Years ago, I had a friend who had a Spanish last name. I was the only one that could pronounce it correctly, which was crazy because it was pronounced exactly like it was spelled. No unusual characters. If you tried to Anglicize it, it would have been probably exactly the same.
Anyway, in one of my scifi NiPs, I have a character whose culture is such that they do chose their own name once they reach a certain age.
Was Stan tickled because a dug is a breast in Romeo and Juliet?
I have no problem with my first name, but the married name, but the spelling often is a problem for people who leave out the “c”.
I’ve always liked my first name and thought it was one of the things my parents didn’t F up. Hate the middle name though, but since I don’t use it, no biggie.
Ooh! Touched a nerve!
Sis, I like your middle name, since it’s the same name as a good friend of mine from Berkeley. And no, I doubt Stan is all that literary.
Add to my list of gripes people who spell my first name Douglass. OH COME ON.
Is that pronounced doo-gul-ass?
try being shaina haber. shauna harbor, anyone? how about shania herber? sheena? sha-eena? Hahber? Huber?
AI is just like rAIn. SHAIN. same sound. Haber’s a little more uncommon, but how would you pronounce “habe”? like any other _a_e word, yeah? just add an R on the end. bake–>baker. yeah? easyyyy.
seriously people. just cuz you’ve never heard it, didnt mean you heard wrong and must make something up. ask again, for crissakes! we people with uncommon names are more than willing to repeat ourselves or spell slowly, y’know.
that being said, i LOVE my name. wouldn’t change it for the world 🙂
p.s. my “hebrew” name is Zeisil. it is made up, taken from the yiddish “siesel” or sweet. i once had a hebrew school teacher call me Zoosel. class didnt let that die for a looong time. i like it, also, but dude why couldnt my parents just have kept my name the same, shaina is close enough to hebrew (it’s also yiddish). or at least pick a REAL name. jeez.
Yeah, really, why couldn’t the Hebrew teacher accept a perfectly decent Yiddish name? That’s perplexing!
Let’s not even go into the joy and bliss Finnish names bring. 😛 At least my parents were wise enough to give my brother and I English first names. Although, come to think of it, people still muck mine up regardless. Sheesh.
Which is why Ms. Junior Peanut will have a name that (hopefully) will be easy to pronounce in both languages. (We’re looking at one choice that works both in English and Finnish. But we’ll see.)
Kris, with Finnish, you just add an ‘en’ on the end and you’re done.
🙂