Spelling names; Was "Stress on final syllable of names"

[Victoria Neufeldt]

I had a friend of Icelandic heritage years ago who used to have to explain
that her name was spelled "with a K, a J, and two S's".  It was
"Kristjansson" and people always wanted to spell it "Christianson".

Victoria




> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf
> Of Arnold Zwicky
> Sent: Sunday, September 24, 2000 9:04 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: Fwd: Stress on final syllable of names
>
>
> walt's "like a wolf and a ram" is nice, and, i assume, effective.
>
> ZWICKY is troublesome.  if i can't be "alexander adams" and have
> to give my real name, i now say "it's WICK with a Z in front and
> a Y at the end", which seems to work.
>
> i much prefer the long, but more entertaining,
>   Z as in ZEBRA;
>   W as in WATER BUFFALO;
>   I as in IBEX;
>   C as in COW;
>   K as in KUDU;
>   Y as in YAK.
> but few people have the patience to sit through this, and ibexes
> and kudus are not very well known.
>
> arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)
>