anise

[Doug_Harris]

One of the worse names I've ever heard -- from the same school where one
mother had named her two sons Admiral and General -- was the woman from
"the [Caribbean] islands" who intended her son's name to be pronounced
'shaTEED'. 'Didn't do him any favors, though, when she spelled it Shithead.
(Absolutely true!)
dh

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I am continually astonished at how un-selfconscious, unknowledgeable,
incurious my students are about their own names or those of their classmates
and others! Maybe, on account of budget cuts, recess had been abolished at
their elementary schools, so they never had to endure (or got to inflict)
name-taunts.

Just today I tossed out the softball question, "If Columbus WAS born Jewish,
then he must have adopted the name Christopher later in life; what's the
reason for that conclusion?"  Silence.  Finally, a very tentatively offered
response: "Because it sounds kind of like 'Christian'?"

Besides taunt-resistance, doesn't the preference for pronouncing "Regina"
with [-jin@] instead of with [-jain@] parallel the evident (American)
preference for the Latinate pronunciations of "Maria" and "Sophia," which we
have discussed here?

--Charlie
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