My name is easily mispronounced because of how it’s written. Many years ago while I was still in elementary school, my father traveled to the US and sent me a gift. He wrote it down phonetically, the way he thought it should be pronounced, and it stuck.

For most of my life in the US, which is most of my life in general at this point, I didn’t bother correcting people. I never cared for it too much, and with time, it started working as a natural filter: those who were close to me or wanted to get to know me bothered to ask, while others who just shook my hand once every couple of months were out of my social club, which included knowing how to say my name correctly.

Only recently, I realized how selfish I’ve been. While I don’t care that much, people around me do. How embarrassing it must be for someone who works with me to be corrected - and usually by someone else - for something they assumed was correct for years! For a long time, I dismissed the cringes in their faces with a smile, assuring them it was OK, that it always happens. While true and I honestly don’t mind, it doesn’t mean they don’t feel bad about it.

Yesterday, I received the monthly invitation to participate in Micro.blog’s analog writing group from the excellent Halsted (if you’re into writing reading and books, definitely give her a read). It takes place on Zoom, and Halsted has a couple of good tips for participants, which I adopted immediately. One of them - you guessed it - is to include a pronunciation of your name with namedrop.

While I chose not to use this particular service over privacy concerns, creating a quick recording of my name and hosting it as a WAV file somewhere on the web is easy enough. I now have my email signature include my pronounces (this is another important thing: while you may be OK with people defaulting your pronounces to she/her or he/him, they might worry they misgender you, especially if you work in a workplace that is LGBTQIA aware!) and a public link on Google Drive with a recording of me saying my name. Wallah! No more cringes.