I vividly remember the day I claimed my first middle school honor roll certificate. Hundreds of kids lined the wall in our school cafeteria, happily chatting about the latest Fortnite season or showing off their newest fidget spinner. Parents in the audience roared as each child walked by and got their picture taken. As my principal quickly progressed through the names—Adams, click, Brown, click, Davis, click, Jones, click, Smith, click—a pit began to form in my stomach. I knew that once she hit “V”, I would need to hold for a slight pause, and then an eventual confused syllabic uttering. Opposed to anger or frustration, every time that my name would be butchered I felt an extreme sense of embarrassment. Why couldn’tI just be “Cory Adams”, “Cory Jones”, or “Cory Smith”, instead of “Cory Voskanian”.
When people first meet me, the first question that they often ask is: “How do you pronounce your last name?” Instead of quickly giving an answer, I always respond with “Guess.” Regardless ofthe pronunciation they choose, I will always commend their attempt because I believe when no effort is made, that is a greater offense than all. Allowing ourselves to be okay with making mistakes is the greatest avenue of education. When people mispronounce my last name, I don’t seek to correct them, but I rather get the opportunity to tell them about my heritage and my last name’s meaning. Whether it emerges as “Vo-ska-nan”,“Vos-cane-ian”, “Voss-canyon”, or otherwise, I take each variance as a chance to explain something others are not completely familiar with.
There doesn’t need to exist an awkward dichotomy between proper pronunciation and surnames if these two facets are approached with respect and whimsicality. Paris 2024 Olympic Athletes went viral on social media for the cadence of which they pronounced their names on their online digital profiles. The differing levels of singing, whispering, and yelling that were exhibited on the profiles allowed olympic fans to digest cultural heritage in both a culturally sensitive way, but also a playful, inviting way. Similarly, I find in my own life that I will often use other strategies to help people break down the pronunciation of my name. Beyond latin phonetic chunks, I will use other English words or phrases to help break down my last name intosyllables that give a fun rhythm to an interaction that would normally fall into a corrective, lecturing sphere.
Throughout my entire academic career, my last name has been a brutal victim of spellcheck. Each time I go to make a header, I see a devious red line snake under what has been computationally marked as “incorrect”. Although I tell myself the system is just underlining what it is unfamiliar with, it is hard to erase the thought that deep down that there is something “wrong” with what you are typing.
While names.org does an apt job at identifying the etymology of many surnames, a comprehensive database spearheaded by Apple could amend the aforementioned red line awkwardness. Giving consumers of Apple products the ability to submit their own names, in all their uniqueness, to a widespread private database could save users the humiliation of a perceived misspelling. An idea like this doesn’t have to extend far beyond Apple’s capabilities either; there already exists an “add to dictionary” option. Now, if we expand this “add to dictionary” button into a “submit to dictionary” feature, a small team pairedwith the help of an artificial algorithm could review each name in order to complete the creation of this brand new name database.
Even on a smaller scale, there are many individualistic changes that can combat the last name pronunciation question. In email signatures, an audio file could be attached next to one’s name to allow those you are communicating with to know the proper pronunciation. On professional websites, alternate text could be provided with traditional phonetic pronunciations listed upon clicking. If feeling even more playful over text format, one could “frankenstein” certain English words together to allow for a completed product.
Beyond a multitude of physical solutions provided, the question of “how do you pronounce your last name?” is always one of my favorites to personally answer. Whether the question is asked out of curiosity, confusion, or both, I think that even the willingness to ask the question shows that the other party cares. When we make efforts to learn about others, great progress is made.
So when I look back to that day on my middle school stage, although my last name was not pronounced as perfectly as it could have been, I could still stand proud to represent myself and my accomplishments as I heard Voskanian, click.
