My maiden name was awful to have. Other people liked it because it looked cool, but it was a hassle for everything even in the US, where at least part of it was well known. I then moved to Germany, where it was just totally foreign.
My married name is under three syllables (vs more than eight), easy to spell, and sounds as German as possible. My husband would have loved to take my last name, but we couldn’t do it the way we wanted to (German naming laws 🙃). I would really have liked to at least have been able to keep my maiden name as a middle name, but alas.
I still feel very weird (about a year out) about it, but there are way more good feelings than bad.
However, it’s really annoying that people now assume I’m German. I put in a shit load of work to learn German well as an adult, and my strongest skill is in pronunciation. That combined with my name means people think I’m just a native German who’s bad at grammar, and they don’t correct me anymore.
I always wanted to blend in as a native, I just didn’t think about the middle stretch where I just seem a bit dumb to others, both because of the language and cultural things that people now expect me to know (I thought it was called handkäse because you can eat the little rounds straight from the hand, no need for bread, until last year).
I have a German surname, but my family changed the pronunciation to sound lest German during WWII so now Germans pronounce it “wrong” and no one else can pronounce it at all.
I read most of my news, so it took about a month to realize the VP candidates last name was pronounced “Walls,” so you’re among company.
I’m from Connecticut, which has a town called Berlin, pronounced BURR-lun (/‘bərlən/). That , like the pronunciation of many German-origin names, was changed during WWII, but it’s basically a shibboleth for locals now, like Houston Street.
My maiden name was awful to have. Other people liked it because it looked cool, but it was a hassle for everything even in the US, where at least part of it was well known. I then moved to Germany, where it was just totally foreign.
My married name is under three syllables (vs more than eight), easy to spell, and sounds as German as possible. My husband would have loved to take my last name, but we couldn’t do it the way we wanted to (German naming laws 🙃). I would really have liked to at least have been able to keep my maiden name as a middle name, but alas.
I still feel very weird (about a year out) about it, but there are way more good feelings than bad.
However, it’s really annoying that people now assume I’m German. I put in a shit load of work to learn German well as an adult, and my strongest skill is in pronunciation. That combined with my name means people think I’m just a native German who’s bad at grammar, and they don’t correct me anymore.
I always wanted to blend in as a native, I just didn’t think about the middle stretch where I just seem a bit dumb to others, both because of the language and cultural things that people now expect me to know (I thought it was called handkäse because you can eat the little rounds straight from the hand, no need for bread, until last year).
I have a German surname, but my family changed the pronunciation to sound lest German during WWII so now Germans pronounce it “wrong” and no one else can pronounce it at all.
I read most of my news, so it took about a month to realize the VP candidates last name was pronounced “Walls,” so you’re among company.
I’m from Connecticut, which has a town called Berlin, pronounced BURR-lun (/‘bərlən/). That , like the pronunciation of many German-origin names, was changed during WWII, but it’s basically a shibboleth for locals now, like Houston Street.
I’m in Indiana and half of our place names are pronounced incorrectly.
Ver-sayles (Versailles)
Rooshaville (Russiaville)
Pee-ru (Peru) Kay-roh (Cairo)
And, of course, we’re the home of the University of Note’r Daym.