My name and me

[nancylebov]

CJ Cherryh raised the question on facebook of how people feel about their first names, and I'm continuing it here.

I live in my head so much that I find it odd to have a name and a face, though I've more or less gotten used to it. I've never seen anyone else mention that reaction to those very ordinary features of living.

I'm neutral about my name, and there's no other name that seems more plausible to me. For quite a few years, if people got my first name wrong, it was very likely to be by calling me Linda. Maybe I looked like a Linda?

I got my name because I was named after a Channah (guttural ch), but my mother didn't like Hannah or Ann.

The only thing I don't like about my first name is that it's occasionally used as shorthand for "man who is to be raped" as in "your cellmate is going to call you nancy". I could live without that.

I defend my last name because most people can't hear it, see it, or (of course) spell it accurately. It's Lebovitz. That's L-E-B as in boy-O-V as in Victor-I-T-Z. There is no I in the first syllable. That's a V in the last syllable, and it's pronounced like a V.

Mid-Westerners are more likely to get my name right. I don't know whether it's a tradition of courtesy, or less exposure to the more common spelling.

On the what-a-strange-thing-it-is-to-be-a-human side, I think the extent to which people get my name wrong (after they've been told it three times, had it spelled for them, and seen it in print) is evidence that people generally notice very little about the world, especially if they have a slot which isn't quite right to fit their experience into. I'm not saying that everyone is ignoring the same things, though.

I chose nancylebov for lj because a cute nym wasn't occurring to me and I wanted something which might be easier to remember and spell. I've been called Nancy LeBow. There's just no escape from that damned W.

There are unrelated Lebovitzes in the world, but the story for my family line is that the original name was Probolski (I'm guessing about the spelling), but it was changed at Ellis island. I'm not sure about why-- maybe an error, maybe a belief that Lebovitz sounded more American.

The Cherryh discussion turned up a lot of reactions and stories people have about their names... tell me about yours if you'd like.

Comments

[noelfigart]

My name is Noël Lynne Figart.

It did not originally have the trema (usually called an umlaut, but the word for it in French is trema and my name is French). When teachers consistently looked at the name and thought it was the English Nowuhull, then put me in the boy's section, I got frustrated. Daddy suggested the addition of the trema over the e. Yes, I know, it's still a boy's name, but in the US, the French pronunciation is generally perceived as a female name. Generally. I am often addressed in professional emails as Mr. Figart, as my business email only uses the middle initial, so there's no cue with the feminine spelling of my middle name that I'm a woman.

My last name is pronounced with a long I. No-one ever does it and usually interprets it as FIG-art rather than FI-gart. I gave up sweating that long ago. I've no idea where it came from, but there is a Figart county Ireland, so maybe we're Irish.

However, I am CONSISTENTLY referred to as Nicole. I have no fucking idea why. People who have READ MY NAME AND ARE RESPONDING IN EMAIL will do it. That does irritate me a bit, but I've stopped correcting people every time they do it, as it tends to slow down meetings.

[andrewhickey.info]

I also find it odd to have a name and a face. Very odd.
As for names, people can never get my surname right -- I get Hinkley, Hiskey, and (from people who see my URL) Whickey, Whiskey and others. Those who do get it right often laugh -- Hickey is apparently the most hilarious surname around.
My wife's surname is no easier -- Matthies. I often get calls asking to speak to "Mr. Mathews" or "Mr. Matthias"...

[thnidu]

My last name is spelled Mandel and pronounced "man-DELL", accent on the second syllable. When someone calls for "Mr. MAN-dle" they obviously do not know me. They're not always telemarketers, though: sometimes they're legitimately calling about, say, something I've ordered.

My wife's name was quite unusual: Rene, with no accent marks, pronounced "REE-nee". Lots of mail for "Mr. Rene Mandel" and calls for "Mr. ruh-NAY MAN-dle" got rejected right away!

[azurelunatic]

I only use the one I was originally assigned for business purposes and with the friends & family who know it and shouldn't know my real name. Otherwise I am Azz.

[zenlizard]

Oddly enough, yesterday, your name came up in conversation: and yes, several times Marc & I had to emphasize your correct name (No i & v instead of W). I think it's just a characteristic of humans to fit things into categories, and it's difficult, take a lot of effort for the average person to remember of exceptions to a given category. And unfortunately, your name seems to fit into the I/W category for most people.

[olimay]

I get called Oscar a lot. A girl in 7th and 8th grade was dead convinced my name was Sylvester. I thought it was funny, and so did everyone else, so we just let her carry on with it. In high school, someone corrected her. She was really, really shocked. And very apologetic. I still thought it was funny.

My name was the subject of jokes in grade school. "Oliver Twist" and "Oliver clothesoff" and stuff. People joked around, and I was never very good at responding or retorting. Worst was "Oscar Mayer". It's been a long time since that. I'm pretty used to my first name now.

My surname, "Mayor", is a bit more of a complicated issue. People want to spell it "Mayer" if pronounced flatly, with an Anglo accent--which is the natural accent of myself and my siblings and just about everyone we deal with. Since about 2007 I've always pronounced it in the Filipino or Spanish way so they get the spelling right. It helps me to distance myself from Oscar Mayer.

Every once in a while I become concerned with the pronunciation of my surname name in Japan. Several Japanese teachers have decided to call me "Mei yaa"-san, as in "Maikuru Burumubaagu wazu Meiyaa obbu Nyuu Youku" (exaggerated Japanese pronunciation of the phrase, "Michael Bloomberg was Mayor of New York"). This is not bad, but I would rather it be adapted from the more Spanish pronunciation. I've tentatively settled on 「マヨール」/"Ma you ru", to simulate the flat vowels and penultimate accent a Spanish or Pilipino speaker would give it. I think it makes me sound decidedly more foreign, though, maybe even intimidatingly non-Asian. I think my original reason was for people to be able to spell it correctly when writing it using the Latin alphabet.

+But, aha: You'll see that a lot of my screennames are based on my personal name and surname--especially /olimay*/. Although I go out of my way to pronounce my surname with flat vowels and penultimate stress, my screenname variations imply the other one: "olimaybe", "olimayhem", etc. I know "olimay" is more likely to be pronounced by English speakers like "Oli may have stolen the cookie from the cookie jar" rather than "Hey Oli my computer is having problems." I know I've introduced a bit of a weird contradiction with this; oh well.

[thnidu]

Your CJ Cherryh link isn't working.

[nancylebov]

Thanks for letting me know. I'm simplifying my life by taking the link out-- as I recall, it worked when I posted.

[siderea]

I live in my head so much that I find it odd to have a name and a face, though I've more or less gotten used to it. I've never seen anyone else mention that reaction to those very ordinary features of living.

"It is morning.
I stand before the mirror
and surprise my soul once more.
Blue air rushes above my ceiling,
there are suns beneath my floor." -- Conrad Aiken, from "The Morning Song of Senlin"

Count me in. I'm sort of used to it, I suppose.

[nancylebov]

Thanks, it's a lovely poem, and I think it would be satisfying for any Myers-Briggs N who isn't totally allergic to religion.

Andrewhickey (a earlier commenter) is another person who finds it weird to have a face and a name.

I use reincarnation as a metaphor rather than an actual belief, and it seems somewhat plausible that this is my first time around as a human.

[thnidu]

I knew that mistaken "LeBow" looked familiar, and I've finally placed it, more or less. It's (part of) the name of at least one building at Drexel University that I walk past almost every week.

I hardly ever encountered that name before coming to Philadelphia to work at Penn, but this explains why you keep getting that error, living here also.

[nancylebov]

I've only gotten that error once, and I don't know whether it was by a Philadelphian.

[inquisitiveraven]

Y'know, I'm still trying to figure out where that quilt show mailing list got "Lebointe."

I don't normally think much about my given name except when I run into someone else with the same name which doesn't happen often. There was a period when as a volunteer EMT where I was one of three people with my name at the fire company, one of the others an officer. That got confusing.

My surname is much more interesting. First of all, most people bearing the name "Kuhn" are not Jewish to the point where I can assume that a Jew named "Kuhn" is a relative.

I also have a couple of famous relatives, my second cousin Thomas Kuhn being the big one. I get tired of New Agers and postmodernists misinterpreting his work. My grandfather is probably better known in the art history world than he is to the general public. He was the curator of the Busch-Reisinger Museum of Germanic Art pre-World War II and is responsible for transforming it from a collection plaster casts of European statuary to a world class collection of modern German art. He got a lot of art that the Nazis disapproved of out of Germany and after WWII, he was one of the Monuments Men who rescued stolen art from the Nazis.

I don't think my surname gets misspelled as often as Nancy's; usually when that does happen, it morphs to "Kahn" although I think I've seen "Kohn" a couple of times.

No, what usually happens is that it gets mispronounced. That's changed over the years. When I was a kid, the most common mispronunciation was "Kuen" (Long "u"), apparently from Bowie Kuhn. Since he retired from his position as baseball commissioner, the most common mispronunciation has morphed to "Kun" (short "u"). Then again, it may be a geographical thing; when I was getting the long "u" pronunciation, I lived in the Midwest. I think I started noticing the short "u" pronunciation after moving to the East Coast. In fact, my last name is pronounced "Koon" (like "raccoon.")