The "h" is still silent

Sometimes I wonder if my annoyance at seemingly small things is a sign of getting old. I still subscribe to a generally "don't sweat the small stuff, water off a duck" way of thinking, but there are some things that just hit me like fingernails on a blackboard, and I find myself wondering if my annoyance is rational or not.

The entire time I was growing up, I listened to people mis-pronouce my last name, Divnich. The "h", you see, is silent. The name is pronounced "Div-nik". Rhymes with tick. But of course, on the first day of school, when they sat us all in the gym, and read our names from a class list, I would get "Div-nitch". Rhymes with rich. Or itch.

Which is reasonably understandable - the first time. Heck, even the tenth time.

But the first school I went to, I was there for four years. FOUR YEARS. And they would call "Div-nitch" and I would quietly say "Div-nik. The "h" is silent." And as the months passed, all of the teachers I encountered would get corrected (politely, of course), and pronounce it properly when taking attendance, and say it right at the end-of-year-awards, and call my mother and ask for "Mrs. Div-nik" when I got beat up after school.

And then the following September, the next year's teacher - who had been listening to my name pronounced properly for one, two, three years in all of those circumstances, would look at my name on a list and say "Div-nitch."

I normally don't correct people about the pronunciation of my name anymore if it's not someone with whom I'm going to have ongoing communication. The people who know me pronounce it right (and then they spell my married name, Haggert, wrong) , especially once they've heard my very own self pronouncing it on my voice mail or something. It's not an issue anymore, you know? And I seem to move in circles where the people are intelligent enough - or at least, listening - that they get it right sooner rather than later.

But today, it bothered me, and it wasn't even my name they were calling. (because, it's not always about me)

Every month, our school holds a Student-of-the-Month assembly, where a kid is chosen from every class as the best example of that month's designated character trait. The chosen kids, about 30 in all, are called forward one by one. Sometimes, there are additional kids' names called for things like team acknowledgment, etc.

So I sat in the assembly this morning. Now, we're a fairly cosmopolitan school in a large urban centre. An ethnic mosaic. In addition to the MacGregors and Jones, there are Lings and Mohammeds and Maillouxs, etc. Names that might be tough to pronounce at first glance, especially if you're a MacGragor rather than a Mohammed.

There's this one family that, like ours, has seen three kids go through that school. Two are still there, so, roughly, this is the eleventh year that the last name has been on the books. Eleven years of hearing this name at assemblies, over the announcements, on the playground. Eleven years of this last name being in various classrooms.

The first names of the two aren't easy either, but again, see ELEVEN years, above.

Both their names were called this morning, by a teacher who's been at the school five years. By a teacher who taught one of them, and coached another.

By a teacher who butchered the pronunciation of both their names, first and last, BOTH TIMES.

The first time, at least a dozen voices corrected her. And then she went right ahead and pronounced it wrong the second time anyway.

Three kids. Five years of teaching there. Two months into the school year. Reading a list that she was given Friday, plenty of time to ask the kid's homeroon teacher, "hey, how do you say this name?"

From my perspective, the teacher either isn't trying, or isn't listening, neither of which are excuseable.

We hear a lot about how hard it is to reach kids these days. How they don't pay attention, don't respect the classroom, etc. But I'll never forget the day I had to call a fifth grader up for a recognition. A kid I'd never met at that point, and I'm not a teacher there.  I checked with someone ahead of time, and that kid's eyes lit up when I called out "Xu" and pronounced it "Shu" without missing a beat. She thanked me for getting her name right, and for a year after, whenever I saw her in the hall, she made a point of saying hello.

Pronouncing a name properly seems like such a little thing, but who knows what kind of difference it would make?

Comments

[kim]

We had a teacher once who told Munch that he spelt his own name wrong! Munch explained that it was supposed to be spelt that way, as it is gaelic, but the teacher seemed uninterested...and continued to spell Munch's name wrong, until we stepped in.

Having an unusual last name, before i married a commoner (ha!) I remember what it was like to have your name mis-pronounced over and over again

[Jenn PB]

Preaching to the choir here. You know what I got when they mispronounced my name.

[Heather Cook]

I went from Atton to McCutcheon... both presented their own pronunciation/spelling problems... but now, yeehaw I'm Heather Cook! The worst so far has been, "no, it's just Cook.. no 'e'... don't think, just spell it.. don't make it any harder than it has to be."

[Pam]

Yes, I know. Kock = COOK, not COCK. I can't blame them, though. The name doesn't look like "cook". Maybe it'd be better if we used the true German pronunciation, "Coke." That makes better sense, phonetically.

Before I married him, and my name was the ultra-mundane "Farmer", I asked him if he'd let us change the spelling to Koch. He agreed, but we never got 'round to it.

Nowadays, we consider it an exercise in character-building. Go to the pharmacy: "It's cook, with a K," I say. This confuses them. The kids' acquaintances have decided the name is actually Knock.

Isn't it fun?

I should wish for a nice, simple name like Divnich or Haggert. :)