Mispronouncing Student’s Name Now Considered a ‘Microaggression’

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Phonetic pronunciation was a must in grad school, especially during the commencement ceremony. As an example, here was one of my colleague's names:

Sadatgoltabarestani, Seyedmehdi

Any takers on a first shot pronunciation?
Isn't this the guy from Serial? 

 
I don't know if my sons' names are considered unique, but they both have Spanish names.  I definitely get annoyed when people don't pronounce their names right even after pronouncing it for them.  

 
My son's name is sort of a hybrid between an English name and the Spanish equivalent, so he gets it pronounced both ways. My daughter has a name that is pronounced two ways with one way being much more prevalent, but we happen to pronounce it the other way. She gets called that quite a bit, but it's not a big deal in my opinion and it doesn't seem to bother her (at least not yet). As she gets older we'll let her decide if she wants to correct someone about it.

And while we're on the weird names kick, my wife was told about a lady who named her daughter Pajama. Of course it wasn't pronounced the way you would expect, it was pronounced Pa-jemay (short a in Pa). The crazy thing was that the mom wasn't being creative, she literally saw the word pajama when shopping for clothes and thought that would be a great name for her daughter...

 
My son's name is sort of a hybrid between an English name and the Spanish equivalent, so he gets it pronounced both ways. My daughter has a name that is pronounced two ways with one way being much more prevalent, but we happen to pronounce it the other way. She gets called that quite a bit, but it's not a big deal in my opinion and it doesn't seem to bother her (at least not yet). As she gets older we'll let her decide if she wants to correct someone about it.

And while we're on the weird names kick, my wife was told about a lady who named her daughter Pajama. Of course it wasn't pronounced the way you would expect, it was pronounced Pa-jemay (short a in Pa). The crazy thing was that the mom wasn't being creative, she literally saw the word pajama when shopping for clothes and thought that would be a great name for her daughter...
How hard is it really to pronounce?  Mih-nee-blee doesn't seem that difficult.

 
My nephew is in 7th grade right now, but when he was in 5th, my sister told me I had to look at his class in the yearbook.  I was bored, so why not.  I nearly pissed myself when I got to the girl named Irony.

 
My daughter has a friend named Selah.  Her father pronounces it "See-luh" and all her friends pronounce it "Say-luh".  It was kinda weird.  Her dad was the coach of the basketball team she and my daughter were on.  So, you had all the kids on the bench yelling for "Say-luh" and her dad yelling "See-luh". So, I took the time one day to ask her if all her friends were pronouncing her name wrong and which way did she prefer I pronounce it; which one was correct? I assumed her father was right, naturally.  She said "it doesn't matter".  I said, "Ok, pick one for me."  She said, "Just call me 'Say-luh', that's what I tell all my friends to call me." 

 
I helped in the naming of my 3 spawn, but really the only thing I cared about was that we didn't call them by their middle name.  That has caused me a great deal of headache throughoutt my life.  Whatever you name them, call them by the first.

 
I helped in the naming of my 3 spawn, but really the only thing I cared about was that we didn't call them by their middle name.  That has caused me a great deal of headache throughoutt my life.  Whatever you name them, call them by the first.
I took similar approaches to raising my kids as this, basically not making them go through the things I hated.  And now that they're much older I think that's the wrong approach.  Not only do they go through different things that cause them headaches, they go through fewer which I can't relate to at all.  If they'd had more of the same problems as me, then at least I could relate to more of their problems and seem like a real hero when I solve them.  :D

 
Boys name: Couldn't be any of my wife ex boyfriends.  My son did end up with two middle names though.  Apparently that's cool in Latin culture.

Girls name: Couldn't be mistaken for a stripper so I pronounced every name my wife picked in stripper introduction fashion "Next to the stage.....Chasity", nope.

 

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