We moved into a new apartment recently and it took a long time for the name tags on the post box and the doorbell to be changed . Finally when we got them they looked like this:
S.Poluri and C.Jakkinapalli
It confused the hell out of me and I started to wonder how things could be so different in India and Europe. Poluri and Jakkinpalli are the last name/family name/surname but our first names just disappeared...and in India our name tags would have been P.Siva Priya or J.Chandrashekar...Are we two different persons in two continents?
And here's the story of the NAME challenge -
On the news the other day they were interviewing someone by the name "Zhimsele Ghamakulu" - my challenges :
1. How do I pronounce that? ( and I was the Accent and Communication Expert in India!!!)
2. Is this person Male or Female? (How do you know if you dont see the video?)
3. What is the first name and what is the last name? (I CANNOT afford to hurt sentiments by going wrong with that!)
It's like stepping on eggshells and trying not to make noise or hurt anyone...Names in Europe are a big mystery and HELLO you cannot TRY to pronounce them in your own language. You have to pronounce a name AS IT IS pronounced in THE language it was CREATED. That's a BLIND RULE!
Ok Let's get a few more examples to totally confuse us:
Some First name and Last name meddlers:
- Andrew Russel and Russel Peters (excuse us Mr.Peters oops sorry Mr.Russel!)
- Mark Antony and then you meet Tim Mark (Hi there Mark - who? where's the Mr.? - you have to place a Mr.with the last name didn't you know? )
- O'Neil Harvey and when I'm just getting my mouth around it I meet Joe O'Neil wow!
Now kindly DO not try to pronounce these:
- Kemar Roach
- Hanarz Krzysztof
- Krzysztof Sadowski (and I thought I found the last name ha ha)
And Please if you here you are going to meet Pascal/e please try to check the spelling in the email. I met people with the name Pascal and Pascale one of the most common names around here and both are pronounced as PAS-KEL!
After being put through this I guess the quote from Shakespeare "What's in a name" is not true and I'd say Everything is in the NAME and you better get it right!
