[nat]

I don't think this will help as much as they hope it will. In my experience, people are generally incapable of pronouncing anything, even when it is said to their face.

My name is Nat, which is about as simple a name as you could ask for. But quite often, I will introduce myself, "Hi, I'm Nat", and the response will be "Nice to meet you, Nate". My wife experiences it too (even from her mother!), so I don't think my pronunciation is the problem here.

Is this kind of vowel sloppiness more common in the US? Or should I just take the hint and change my name?

[shazow]

Or even worse: When a barista takes my name for my order, I say "Andrey." Usually they'll spell it "Andre" but whatever.

Five minutes later, more often than not, they call out "Aubrey." That's reading their own handwriting.

You can't explain that.

:P

[CodeMage]

It can get worse than that ;)

I originally come from Serbia, but I spent the last 14 years in Chile, where most people seemed to choke on my name: Vojislav. When pronounced correctly, it's "voice love", but nobody outside the territory of ex-Yugoslavia knows how to read it correctly.

When it came to buying coffee and stuff like that, I had the choice of explaining my name ad nauseum or adopting an easier one. I decided to call myself "Boris", thanks to telemarketers who would recover from my name by changing it to something they could deal with ;-)

Anyway, that worked quite fine for years and years, until it started failing, ironically at the Starbucks inside a mall with the highest concentration of tourists and immigrants. I would say "Boris" and two times out of five they would write down "Maurice".

The cherry on top inevitable came five minutes later, when a different barista would call out "Mauricio".

Fortunately, I moved before I gave in to temptation to do what a friend of mine did on a regular basis: give "Spongebob" as his name :P

[philwelch]

I had a Serbian coworker once named Dragan. Despite how awesome his name was, he often went by "Mike", usually for similar reasons.

[keerthiko]

There's a conspiracy theory that Starbucks and other large cafe chains intentionally misspell names, so that the customer will take a picture and facebook/instagram it, as free advertising for the place.

If it isn't true, it certainly should be. If I opened a coffee shop tomorrow, I would instruct all my baristas to misspell the customer names for this reason.

[mthoms]

Better still - write flattering descriptions. "Cute guy with red shirt", "Woman in pretty dress", etc.

[danieltillett]

Very clever. I have seen a similar idea used where people gossip loudly in a public place saying nice things about the person they want to ingratiate themselves with who is not present but who can overhear.

[CocaKoala]

Yeah, names in coffeeshops is an entirely separate issue; trying to hear a name when there's a lot of background noise and a hard time limit before it becomes awkward and other customers get angry about the line being held up is pretty rough.

I've actually taken to giving them my full legal first name as opposed to the nickname I usually go by, because the nickname is phonetically ambiguous and the full name isn't.

[obvio]

I just use a pseudonym which is unmistakable, usually a really local name that even though my accent isn't perfect they'll be able to understand it!

[smackfu]

I think it's pretty interesting. If I write both those names in cursive, they look surprisingly similar.

[ahomescu1]

Worst I've got was "Avery" (instead of Andrei).

[kijin]

In general, sloppy pronunciation is more common in countries where most people have little to no contact with anyone who speaks a different language. In order to learn that your vowels are not the only vowels that exist, you need to encounter people who use different vowels, and this needs to start at a very young age when your brain can still pick up the difference.

I recently talked to an Asian man who couldn't hear any difference between "R" and "L", let alone pronounce them. That's what happens when you only speak and hear a single language for decades. Your brain gets wired to ignore any variation that isn't significant in your own language. My "L" really sounds like "R" to him, and your name really sounds like "Nate" to a lot of Americans.

Hopefully, the increasing influx of Spanish and Chinese speakers into the U.S. will force Americans to hear other languages more often in their daily lives.

[dllthomas]

Not just "a different language" but "the relevant language (or something close enough to have the same phonemes)".

[kijin]

Any language is better than none. It's much easier for someone who is familiar with two languages to learn the basics of a third language, than it is for someone who has only ever spoken one language to learn the basics of a second language (his first foreign language).

[dllthomas]

Possibly. I just know that learning Polish, it is being hard for me to distinguish sounds despite speaking various amounts of Spanish, Japanese, German, Hebrew, and Bahasa Indonesia at various points in my life.

[smickie]

We're the UK-side of the office and we have guy called Craig. (Rhymes with plague/vague.)

All of the USA-side pronounce it Krr-egg. Even after I've explained the difference to a group of them, it still goes back to Krr-egg after a week.

I'm Sean, which American's don't have a problem with at all, but I if I had a bitcoin for every-time I was called 'seen' in the UK...

[icegreentea]

It's funny (and I think points to why they keep going back to Krr-egg), that in the accent I speak (standard Canadian... so something of an average), 'Krr-egg' totally rhymes with plague (play-egg) and vague (vay-egg).

[Fuzzwah]

I'm an Aussie living in the US. My name is Rob. Basically every American calls me Raaaab.

[danoprey]

I'm British and in the US I have to deliberately say "Daaayn" so as not to be called Don.

[Roedou]

I'm "Rob", and also British. In the US I have to deliberately say "Rahb" so as not to be called Rub, Roob or Robe.

[nailer]

I'm Australian, and live in the UK, my name is Mike, and here I tell people my name is 'Maike' they don't think it's Mark.

[pacaro]

Just to extend the thread, another Brit in the US, "Paul" gets turned into "Pole", "Poll", "Bull" etc.

[skalla]

My friend's name is Roy, his chinese boss calls him Loy

[icambron]

I'm guessing they just thought they misheard it, since "Nate" is so much more common than "Nat".