I was one of the name callers in the UCLA law school graduation yesterday; as people came up to have their hoods put on them, I announced their names. The graduates (there were about 150 on my side, plus 150 on the other name caller’s) gave me cards with their names as they came up, and I tried to get the names right. To help me, there were spaces on the cards were students could write phonetic representations of their names.
This led me to formulate these three suggestions for getting your name pronounced right:
1. If you have a moment — and you usually will, since there’s a space between names as each graduate is being hooded — just whisper your name to the reader (assuming there’s some possible ambiguity). It’s much easier for the reader to simply repeat your name, especially when it’s also written down, than to try to figure out the pronunciation from the card alone. If you’re not sure whether you’ll have the time, or whether this violates some unwritten rule, check with the administration beforehand. But if you’re allowed to, then do it.
2. Do not, I repeat do not, use the phonetic codes like the ones the dictionaries use. Even many educated professors will not be able to figure out, quickly and under pressure, what the bar or the dots or the squiggle above some letter means. Spell it out using (unambiguous) English soundalikes — e.g., “mar-eye-a” if that’s how your “Maria” is pronounced — or say “rhymes with . . .” or whatever else. Just don’t start using special characters, unless you’re graduating from the Linguistics Department.
3. If your name is pronounced the obvious way, leave well enough alone. “Bormon” is fine as it is; saying “Just like ‘Mormon,’ only with a ‘B'” is probably going to be more confusing than helpful, when the reader has just a second or two to figure things out, and thus makes it more likely rather than less likely that he’ll mispronounce things.
And in any case, congratulations!
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