The Name You Were Given and the Name You Choose

not everyone who buys a Pronounce Our Names product is fighting to get people to say a complicated name correctly.

some people are fighting to reclaim a name they gave up.

some are teaching people a name they just chose. some are honoring a name that was taken from their family. some just have a very common name and want to be findable — to have something that makes them specific, locatable, theirs.

the names people give up

i know people who have gone by english approximations of their names for so long they sometimes forget what their name actually sounds like in their parents' mouths.

this happens gradually. a teacher mispronounces it enough times that you stop correcting them. a job interviewer looks at your resume and hesitates. you get tired. you introduce yourself with the easier version because the alternative is an explanation you don't always have energy for.

61% of people in a 2025 Preply survey reported having changed or shortened their name to make it easier for others. 61%.

that's not individual choice in any vacuum. that's the accumulated weight of a thousand small moments that said: the original version costs too much social effort to maintain.

reclaiming it

there's something specific that happens when you put your name — your actual name, the one your family gave you — on a physical object.

it becomes documented. it becomes real in a different way. and when someone sees it on your desk, your badge, your shirt, they encounter it on your terms. you don't have to perform the explanation. the object holds it.

for some people who use Pronounce Our Names products, that's the whole point. not correction. reclamation.

chosen names

chosen names — names people have selected for themselves, for any reason — deserve the same care as given names.

trans people who have chosen names that fit them. people who have converted and taken names from new traditions. people who have anglicized and now want to un-anglicize. people who have simply decided to go by something different.

all of these names deserve to be said correctly. all of them deserve to be present on a badge, a business card, a mug. not in quotes. not with an asterisk. as the name.

the very common name problem

and then there's the inverse: the person named Michael or Jennifer or David who has spent their whole professional life being the fifth result when someone searches their name. whose email signature gets lost because there are four other people at the company with the same name. who just wants to be visible.

a mug on your desk with your name on it is still yours. a badge with your name, your pronunciation, your face — still yours. products that say "this is specifically me" are useful when your name doesn't do that disambiguation work on its own.

the point of Pronounce Our Names was never just "hard-to-pronounce names." it's all of it. the names that get mangled and the names that get overlooked. the names that were given and the names that were chosen. the names people are proud of and the names people are still learning to claim.

every name deserves to be said right.