The wider our circles, the more likely we’ll mispronounce each other’s names. Seeing it as hilarious is a plus. 🙂 I once had regular conversations with a lovely man from Vietnam who was trying to speak more proper English. Not only were there words he couldn’t pronounce, but there were certain sounds his mouth just wouldn’t make, just like my mouth struggled to make some of the sounds that were native to his language.

The little girl never tried to say my name so I’m not sure if she could say it or not. Breaking her name into syllables is a great suggestion. I’ll have to remember that tip!

I do know some Spanish, but just enough to get me in trouble. Too many times I’ve spoken a smattering of it, only to have the Spanish speaker begin speaking to me in rapid-fire Spanish, and me then understanding NONE of it. 🙂

Unfortunately I probably won’t see this little girl again. 🙁 But who knows? Maybe God will cross our paths again sometime in the future.

I do understand how it is to get your name pronounced wrong. I married a Miller, so I was determined my girls’ names would be a little different and feminine. Yet they do often get their names mis-pronounced.

Yanks and Brits and funny foreign names smh. I have a funny foreign name, which has been mangled ever since I started going to school. Biggest eye-openers though have been more recently when I’ve started working on really international teams (ie not mainly Brits/Yanks with one or two foreigners): everybody mangles everybody else’s name. Current team I’m on: there’s a Hungarian and I’m sure everyone gets his name wrong apart from one of the Russians; there’s a French-Canadian and everyone on the team pronounces his name differently. I once spoke at a statistics conference in Thailand with speakers from Thailand, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, etc … nobody could pronounce anybody else’s name. It was kind of hilarious.

Will you meet the Afghan girl again? Can she say your name? Can you break her name down into syllables? Even though I am hardened, it has a big effect when someone manages to get my name right. You can do it (you have some Spanish, no?)