[pavel_lishin]

My name gets mispronounced, too, and I'm fine with it - I actually prefer the incorrectly pronounced version of my name.

It has taught me, though, that when someone tells you "you can just call me X", you should not keep asking them how to really pronounce their name. If you're an American, you are not going to be able to fluently pronounce some non-Indo-European names. It's downright rude to quiz people for minutes on end as to how their name is "really" pronounced. If you don't get it on the second try, just go with what they're comfortable with.

[blahedo]

I agree, but I'll add that a minor variant of that "you can call me either X or Y" is really annoying, because in my experience "it doesn't matter to me" is almost never actually true. I see this a lot with students; they think they're doing me a favour by giving me a choice, but they do prefer one of them, and their friends call them one of them, and I end up looking like an asshole for using some other form of their name.

To avoid the appearance of that, it would be nice if instead of "you can just call me X"---which sounds like it's your less-preferred alternative, your second choice, so obviously someone's going to try for the other one---you said "please call me X" or "I prefer if you call me X". Then everybody wins! :)

[bashinator]

My name has a difficult spelling, and an easy pronunciation. I think I will be looking into this service.

[taejo]

> non-Indo-European names

Are Persian or Polish names easier than Hawaiian or Japanese?

[eru]

German names are hard enough for monolingual English speakers.

[ward]

Yet to encounter a monolingual English speaker to be able to pronounce my first name "Ward" (Dutch speaking Belgian). Only one I know of was someone who had spent several years in Paris (so he knew French and wasn't actually in the monolingual category anymore).

I recorded this one several years ago: http://wardje.eu/dll/ward.wav

Let's not even get started on my last name...

[pavel_lishin]

Wow, yup, that would definitely... take some practice to get right.

I did something similar on YouTube, specifying the way I prefer Americans to pronounce my name: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfTkEaZSMXo