If someone asks you to verify your name, they are asking for you to say your name. Can I tell you, that if your name is really hard to pronounce, it doesn�t mean you should spell it. If you spell your terribly hard to pronounce name instead of saying it, pronounced correctly, I assume that you don�t know how to pronounce your name. I pronounce MY weirdo German last name as it should be first and then if I am met with disbelief about the spelling, I clarify. My name is pronounced /pale- men./ I won�t tell you how it�s spelled or how it�s commonly mispronounced. If you see the way it is spelled, you won�t pronounce it correctly unless you are from Milwaukee WI where there are pages of people with my last name.

See I don�t expect YOU to be able to pronounce my name, but pronouncing my own name is a neat trick I learned right after learning how to talk. You can mispronounce it as much as you want, because if you are a stranger, I don�t expect you to even really try. If you pulled the correct spelling out of your ass it would be akin to pulling a bouquet of flowers out of there. Amazing and unexpected.

My kids like to not believe me, when I tell them how our name is pronounced. This is because I pronounce it differently than their teacher, who is pronouncing it wrong. It�s really hard to convince eep and the mina that in this one instance their teacher is fallible. Because I don�t mind if their teacher can�t pronounce their last name, I only mind if they mispronounce their own last name.

You�d have to be an idiot, or had it misrepresented viciously by your parents, to mispronounce your own name. And really- for most people who have reached the age of 7, the excitement that others feel that you can SPELL your last name, is not such a ticker tape parade either.

To clarify- even with the pronunciation of my name included in this entry? I still do not, and will never expect any of you to be able to pronounce my last name when it looks you in the face.

But if you can, I might love you effortlessly and forever�