PSA: the pronunciation of my last name

[truepenny]

Please disassociate me in your mind from the famous French painter, Claude Monet. Instead, think of the Radio City Rockettes. That should clear up any lingering mental confusion.

ETA: And if not, try this handy mnemonic: "When you MOW the tennis court, please be careful of the NET."

Comments

[larryhammer]

So ... stress on the second syllable?

---L.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I tend to pronounce it almost as a spondee, but yes.

[larryhammer]

So secondary stress first syllable, rather than unstressed. Gotcha.

(If scanning with the four levels of stress system, that'd be a 2-1.)

---L.

[jaylake.livejournal.com]

Everybody sing: "Money, money..."

I am occasionally astonished at the errors made in/of my name, given that both parts of it also do duty as common English nouns.

[casacorona.livejournal.com]

What? You mean it isn't pronounced Zhjay La-kay?

gosh.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

...What the heck kind of errors do people make? Is it mostly with your last name?

(I just have people spelling mine wrong. The long version, I mean. Katharine.)

Re: gosh.

[jaylake.livejournal.com]

The most common error for my first name is "Jake", which is an obvious elision of "Jay Lake", and is also the only one which actually materially annoys me. The most common error for my last name is "Blake", which is a far more common surname than "Lake", plus /b/ and /l/ are both labials, so a fairly easy mishearing/misspeaking.

It gets more varied from there, though. "Lock/Locke", for example. "Joe" for "Jay", though in fact my legal name is "Joseph" and so sometimes that's someone working off paperwork.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Still, the correct base form is so simple I am always boggled at the errors.

Re: gosh.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

Oh, gotcha. (I'd be pretty boggled, too.) Do the Jake people mostly do it via reading too fast, or do they also do it when hearing your name?

(With me, they mostly just spell it Katherine, though sometimes Kathryn.)

Re: gosh.

[jaylake.livejournal.com]

Actually "Jake" is usually a spoken error. My special favorite example of it was being called "Jake" in front of several dozen other people by someone who was publicly criticizing me for mispronouncing their (obscure and obscurely spelled) name, and then lectured about how important it was to get people's names right.

Re: gosh.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

Wow, yeah, that'd be real "fun." For values of "fun" that include teeth drilling.

(I wonder if it's in part an accent thing. I know I swallow ends of words sometimes. (Probably it's just a listening thing, though.))

[jenett]

I have the same problem with mine (which ends in a double tt). I'd hoped that that + the e was enough to avoid the problem for you, but apparently not.

(In my case, if people try the French pronunciation, or ask about it, I tend to say "Hasn't been French since 1066." which is more or less accurate, as the name came across with the Norman invasions as far as I can tell.)

[carbonel]

First syllable has a short "o"? If so, I've been accidentally mispronouncing it for years.

Or doesn't the comparison go that far?

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

As a midwesterner I can make the first syllable sufficiently ambiguous (as to vowel) that it doesn't matter too much :-) .

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Ambiguous-to-long O.

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

...I've just been pronouncing it like my middle name, all this time. Which doesn't sound much like the painter's last name, so, hey, maybe I'm doing it right!

[clhollandwriter]

This is why I write using initials instead of my first name, Cheryl - all my life I've been called Sharon, Karen, Rachel, Carol, Charlotte, and had it spelt Sheryl, Sherril. I've even seen people get "w" in there somehow. So I figured it was better to use a name people could actually spell....

[strawberrymello.livejournal.com]

Wait. Waitwaitwait.
Is it the "o" pronounced like an "oh", or more like an "ah"?
I have this sudden horrible feeling I've been mispronouncing your name for years.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

It's a longish O.

I have invented a mnemonic, which maybe will help: "When you MOW the tennis court, please be careful of the NET."

[strawberrymello.livejournal.com]

Oh good, I have been pronouncing it correctly. Phew!

And you might be interested to now that I have been slowly adding to the ranks of your readers, who in turn convert others!

[magpie-lady.livejournal.com]

While I have apparently always been pronouncing your name correctly, I am now rather taken with the image of an elderly French painter setting up on the Sim-side. In that world, he might be famous for his plein air studies of corpses among the water lilies.