Shir, really? That's cool - I love finding other women with my name!

Thanks for explaining how to pronounce your name. If I ever get to meet you, maybe I'll even get it right!

I'm pretty sure I've never had my first name pronounced incorrectly (apart from a friend who used to enjoy stretching it to two syllables in a sing-songy voice to annoy the crap out of me). My last name, well...that's another story. Doo-mays would be the least aggravating (at least it's close).

Shir, really? That's cool - I love finding other women with my name!

Only her second name, so she's not using it - it's just on her ID.

Now, the weird thing with Names of Family and Names of Buffistas, for me, is that Seska and The Girl's real names are just as my mother's first name and one of her sisters.

It's time to get ready to leave uni when the shelves numbers of the books you're looking for are starting to look funny/cool, right?

How do you pronounce it, Nora?

Mick-GUN-eh-gull

Now, the weird thing with Names of Family and Names of Buffistas, for me, is that Seska and The Girl's real names are just as my mother's first name and one of her sisters.

I hear you. My grandmother's name was Grace Matilda.

Yeah, welcome to my world. It's just a "t." It's nothing complicated or foreign to the US or UK ear. Everyone usually says it right once.

I have to concentrate to say the t, I'll confess. But I slip sounds together like whoa, and say my Fs as Vs and a whole bunch of other stuff.

Mick-GUN-eh-gull

Pretty close, then. (Aunt Dean's friend is Mick-GUN-uh-gull)

My name is awesome for confusing people. "Laura? Maura? Norma? Dora?" and then do not even get me started on my last name.

I immediately think of "A Doll's House," but I suppose "like Ibsen's Nora" might not get you very far in some circles. I have had to spell Ginger more times than you'd think, even after I do my "ginger ale, gingerbread, ginger snaps" routine. Most people won't even attempt my last name, which we pronounce the way one would pronounce any typical English word. I've heard the way Czechs really pronounce it, but I can't replicate it, plus I understand I should have a feminine ending on it. My great grandfather came over in the 1870s, so we're pretty far away from the old county.

I also have Zenkitty's problem, in that I was named for my mother and therefore have always been Ginger, to avoid confusion. I get checks made out to Ginger and I often forget whether I've used Ginger or Virginia when I signed up for something.

~ma for Nora!

I think a lot of people are like my dad, who seems to need to map a new word onto the pattern of one he already knows.

A guy I work with is like this, to the extreme. I've gotten pretty good at not letting momentary confusion show on my face.

Oh, and in case people here are wondering how to pronounce my name:

Wuz doin it wrong.

Mick-GUN-eh-gull

Wuz doin it rite!

ita, do you pronounce it with an aspirated "t" or the elided palatal "t" used in, for example, "butter?" I think you've said before but I wasn't around or don't remember.

People pronounce my name just fine. It's the spelling that screws them up. All three of my names have common alternate spellings.

Then, just in general life, people who can't remember my name call me Nancy, Naomi, Renee, and one woman consistantly called me Chantel.

As an Andrea, I get Annie, Audrey, Angie, and Angela on a regular basis. When I moved to Arizona, for many people it simply did not register in any part of their brains when I would say it with that Mid-West short-a shoved through the nose, but once I started saying it Ahn-drey-uh, they had no trouble. Then I came back with the Mid-West, and kept the Arizona pronunciation because I like it, and it just doesn't register, again.

As I work with/care for people whose skill at speech vary wildly, there are a couple of them that I told, "My name is Andrea, but you can call me Anna." Those two have a bossy housemate who also has a hearing impairment, who give them talkings-to for calling me "Alla". So I tell her that it is a nick-name that I have given them permission to use - but since she makes such a fuss about what other people are doing, she has to call me Andrea.

Oh, and in case people here are wondering how to pronounce my name:

Wuz doin it wrong.

Me too. Of course, now I'm going to have to pronounce it the way I do "shi*" when I get halfway through the word, and realize I'm at work and don't want to swear in front of the residents. So apparently the silent r stands for looking around to see if anyone caught me.