How does one go about changing one's last name? No, not ... Ha, I didn't think of it like that ... not by getting married! Ha ha ... sorry ... phew! Um ... I mean, the pronunciation.
Surely there's nothing legal involved. Could it really be just as simple as telling people ... "It's pronounced ..."
I have a professor who did it. Until 10 years ago, Dr. Seifrid and her husband went by the pronunciation "Seefrid" but now they go by "Saifred" ... a good German name.
I think I'll do that. I'll test it out this summer.
4 comments:
Get married to someone with a surname of "Smith" and all your problems will be solved. Easy.
Just tell people how your name is pronounced, simple as that.
the problem lies in immigration
Well.. Since I don't know you personally, I must admit that I have been wondering how to pronounce your last name. Could you spell out phonetically how it is pronounced?
That's just it ... you can't. English doesn't have certain sounds. Ha ... I don't mean that it's like the "!" (click) in certain African languages. But Slavic languages use different sounds.
The closest I can come to describing the proper pronunciation is breathing out a slight breath and then saying "naht"
The American pronunciation is like the small bug. Terribly less elegant.
If I were living in Prague, I would tell people that my last name was Hnatova. "-ova" being the suffix added to the family names of women, meaning "belonging to."
Maybe I should just move to Prague. They don't have any difficulty saying my last name.
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