Please excuse the gratuitous profanity.

British accents.

Not hot, contrary to popular belief. Ask a Brit to pronounce the word “momentarily” and you’ll see (hear) what I mean. It’s so ridiculously accented that they have no ability to spread the emphasis across a word evenly. Which is why they SUCK SO MUCH at pronouncing Indian (Asian) names, even more so than their American counterparts. What’s worse is that UK born and bred Indians are consequently incapable of pronouncing their own names and shorten seemingly easy names to “Dal,” “Sanj”etc. Most second generation Indian-Americans are at least able to pronounce their own names properly, and most Americans I know are perfectly capable of shortening the vowel to say “sun-jiv.” Brits, though, will inevitably say something to the effect of “SAN-jeeeev.”

Yes, I know I often tell people to shorten my name as well. I’m so sick of hearing people butcher the fuck out of it. I like my name when it’s pronounced the Bengali way. Very few people are able to pronounce it the Bengali way. Which brings me to another dilemma: what do you do when senior people at work completely fuck up your name, and by the time they’ve finished talking, it’s too late to do anything about it? This isn’t a rhetorical question, by the way- I’m genuinely pondering. Ideally, these people should ask how to pronounce an unusual name rather than assume they got it right/know they’re fucking it up but continue to do so regardless. Sometimes they do, but more often, they don’t. At which point you (I) pretty much suck it up and try not to care.

“Yeah…my name is actually Sony Batterycharger. Yeah, my parents really were that cruel.”

People I work with directly have it down tolerably well by now, but they seem to get confused all over again whenever they hear someone else fuck it up. Then it’s back to square one. I give up. I’ll answer to anything by now. Some guy said “shaky” earlier and I looked over my shoulder to see if he was talking to me. True story.