Comment by simiones
5 years ago
I think that for proper names, it's common courtesy to try to prounounce someone's name as close as possible to the way they pronounce it themselves. This may be difficult when using sounds that simply don't exist in your language, and I'm not suggesting going as far as learning how to pronounce new consonants. But, if someone spells their name "St John" but introduces themselves as "Mr Sinjohn" (sɪndʒɪn), it's common courtesy to refer to them as Mr "Sinjohn", not Mr "Saint John". Or, if their name is written as Xi (in Pinyin), but read as Shi, you should call them "Shi", not "Ksi", even though you may not be using the exact right "Sh" sound, and you will probably not be able to match the right pitch contour.
I'm already happy when people are able to copy/paste my name properly in an email. It seems 30% of the people aren't even able to do that.
I kind of like when I go to a foreign county and people pronounce my name in a different way than I'm used to hearing it. Having them struggle to get it "right" just doesn't work anyway and makes them struggle needlessly. Even in my own country, there are two common ways to pronounce my last name and while I only use one way myself, I really don't mind when people use the other way.
I named my son, "Alistair", and there seems to be a million ways people pronounce that. He doesn't seem to care either.
Oh try that when your name is written the same in many languages. Amelia, Lionel, Robert... Yeah I prefer people not worry too much and call me something I understand and move on. My wife's name is Asia (diminutive for her official name, Joanna) which is to be pronounced in Polish. She gets really annoyed when French people try and pronounce it. The 'si' sound is closer to the English 'sh' than the French 'ch' and we don't have this 'sh' sound in French. It really sounds ugly in French...
The effort is appreciated but it's grating and she often ends up kindly telling them 'use Joanna instead'.
Human language is one place where "comes as close as you reasonably can to following Postel's Law" seems to work out pretty well.