I'm imagining that Caridad is hard to pronounce right.

I kind of like Sistine. At least it's pronouncable on first sight.

Of course, it also got another author who uses the name all up in arms because she'd been "branding the name."

WTF.

Oh yeah. At the time, she was also writing for Pocket, albeit, within a different division, and we happened to share the same agent as well. She was Quite Put Out that both the publisher and our mutual agent had said it was okay for me to use Caridad. When my agent pointed out that it was, in fact, my legal middle name, she said it didn't matter, that she'd spent all this time and money establishing herself as Caridad (her real first name), blah, blah, blah, that basically, the house and the agent should have sided with her because She Came First.

Mind you, a lot of these complaints only surfaced after I started winning awards and she'd mistakenly receive congratulatory emails that were meant for me.

To this day, she holds a grudge-- we both happened to be on a panel at RWA National in July and when the librarians to whom we were speaking (along with another author) came in, one of them exclaimed, "Oh my, two authors named Caridad-- is that both your real name?" and she replied, "Well, it's my real first name."

Huh? Isn't it pronounced basically like it's spelled?

It is, but people who aren't familiar with the name or don't know Spanish pronunciations tend to pronounce it Care-ee-dad, whereas in Spanish, it's much softer sounding, more Cah-ree-dahd, with a very slight roll on the "r".

You cannot expect Americans to roll "r"s. Most of their tongues just don't do that. Poor tongues.

Isn't Caridad just Carrie-dodd, with a Spanish inflection?

edit: being in Utah, I guess I have an advantage on Spanish names. In Pennsylvania, Juanita is spelled Wanita.

And there's the ever popular "Mo-jayve Desert" for Mojave

You cannot expect Americans to roll "r"s. Most of their tongues just don't do that. Poor tongues.

Nope. Which is why I very firmly used C. when signing my name and really, it never came up until the publisher decided that Barbara Ferrer wasn't "Latina-sounding enough." (You should've heard the blue streak I cursed when I heard that.) I figured I'd better give them something I had a fighting chance of answering to rather than letting them stick me with something like Carmen Margarita Guadalupe Esperanza de los Santos.

If you think I'm exaggerating, keep in mind they wanted to name Adiós to My Old Life "Light My Fuego."

Publishing marketing types don't get out much, I've discovered.

Caridad -- I also hear the final 'd' as shading slightly towards a t sound, or being more cut off instead of drawn out.

You know, of all the languages I've tried to learn (and mostly failed at) I really do love Spanish the best. The core vocabulary is compact yet flexible, the grammar makes sense, the spelling is dead easy, and it's so lilting and fun to say.

Caridad -- I also hear the final 'd' as shading slightly towards a t sound, or being more cut off instead of drawn out.

It's actually a very soft, almost non-existent sound, like you're about to say the "d" but you don't, not quite, your tongue stopping the sound where the roof of your mouth/backs of your teeth meet, but not in a clipped way.

say the "d" but you don't, not quite, your tongue stopping the sound where the roof of your mouth/backs of your teeth meet, but not in a clipped way

If you lived in the area of Spain where I was stationed, the first "d" was similar in that it sounds more like a cross between a "d" and "th." It's a very soft sound. They dropped final "s"s and rolled double "r"s so long you thought they'd never end.

But you have to really stretch to find names odder than Sylvester.

Heh. Which is what some of my siblings tried to talk my parents into naming me when I was born.