Stop Spelling Your Name The Wrong Way

I was over at Blogography and Dave was mentioning one of his favorite blogs, Ajooja. I took a look and found this on the banner:

Ajooja
(pronounced ‘ah zoo zah’)

Little things like that (I’m lying, I think that’s a big thing) can put me over the edge in no time flat. Just do me a solid and spell it that way to begin with so I don’t have to, I don’t know, take time out from my very busy schedule of staring into space and try it out in my head forty-five times until it makes sense. Uh Zoo ZUH? A Jew Yahweh? What? I don’t want to have to learn how to pronounce the name of a blog anymore than I want to have sex with Jack Black. Yes, he’s funny but good grief, lay off the Ben and Jerry’s for a minute or a lifetime.

Which brings me to the concept of names in general. My parents gave me the totally boring name Susan, which is constantly shortened to Suzy, Susie, Suzi, Susi ad nauseum. In a vain attempt to divorce myself from such a pedestrian moniker I became Suzy Cue, then for a while became Olive Blue. When Gwennie named her child Apple and Julia named her daughter Hazel, I was envious. Those names sucked but who is going to shorten them to Appie and Hazeli?

Recently I drooled over the couple in New Zealand who were fighting to name their newborn child 4Real and when that name was rejected by their registrar of birth decided to call him Superman instead. Superman! His parents fought for two completely ridiculous names and my parents wouldn’t have fought to take me to the dentist while I had a molar hanging out and was begging for Vicodin.

As a drama major at one of the top 60 universities in the U.S., (how scary is it that my college is in the top 60 and all I talk about is stupid show biz shit?) I had to study phonetics. Once you study phonetics, you can never look at a word again and not know how to pronounce it correctly. There are RULES.

I once met a girl who introduced herself like this, “I’m Debi, with one B and an I.” (Spell check grabbed it as Debit, Debby, Debbie, Deli and Debt) I longed to say, “Oh you mean DEEbye because that’s how it should be pronounced.” But I didn’t because anyone who spells their name like that is in the bottom half of people I really am never going to get along with. Even if they pay me.

Men aren’t troubled with this affliction. You never meet a guy who says, “I’m Markk, with two K’s”, or “Hi, Steave, with two E’s and an A.”

End of chatt.