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Apr. 30th, 2025 02:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vr_trakowskiMy RL last name is a bit odd (only a bit). It is a common name but spelt slightly differently, which has the dual effects of people constantly misspelling it, and frequently mispronouncing it. One dropped letter gets put back all the time; the missing letter gives the illusion of a different sound.
One gets used to it. It's not a problem; I do have to take care to check when I'm spelling out my email addresses, because people put in the missing letter automatically without realizing it, and if that isn't caught I don't get the emails, but the mistakes are natural and I'm not offended when people say it wrong.
Correcting the mispronunciation is a reflex at this point. But recently it dawned on me (one of those vast, boggling, ridiculously simple realizations that should have occurred forty years ago) that I don't have to pronounce it that way.
It's my name as much as it's anyone's. I can choose to pronounce it the way it's spelt if I want to, just as some ancestor dropped that one letter and made life more complicated for all their descendants. I can choose.
I'm not going to. I don't like the way the mispronunciation sounds. But the knowledge is there.
One gets used to it. It's not a problem; I do have to take care to check when I'm spelling out my email addresses, because people put in the missing letter automatically without realizing it, and if that isn't caught I don't get the emails, but the mistakes are natural and I'm not offended when people say it wrong.
Correcting the mispronunciation is a reflex at this point. But recently it dawned on me (one of those vast, boggling, ridiculously simple realizations that should have occurred forty years ago) that I don't have to pronounce it that way.
It's my name as much as it's anyone's. I can choose to pronounce it the way it's spelt if I want to, just as some ancestor dropped that one letter and made life more complicated for all their descendants. I can choose.
I'm not going to. I don't like the way the mispronunciation sounds. But the knowledge is there.