On Thu, 23 May 2024 19:01:31 -0400, I wrote:

>I'm actually aware of violations of several of those assumptions:

>31: In places where one does not have to have an 'approved' name, it is
>nearly inevitable that a child will be saddled with a name from that list,
>because one of the parents hates the other, or hates the child, or just
>wants to give the society a poke in the eye. I've encountered a woman named
>"Penis", pronounced "PEH-nee".

Indirectly related to this, don't assume that the _pronunciation_ of any
particular name has anything to do with the way it's _written_, even if
it's written in its "native" alphabet. The most commonly cited examples of
this are

   * Cholmondeley (pronounced as if written "Chumly")
   * Tagliaferia (pronounced as if written "Tolliver" - and I encountered
     one example where it was pronounced as if written "toe-fur")
   * Featherstone-Haugh (pronounced as if written "Fanshaw" or "Farnshaw")

Once way back in the dawn of time (as I was counting it back then), my
father felt it necessary to make this as a point to someone he was working
with. The spelling of our name is as you see it in my messages here
("Zeitlin"); he told that someone that it was pronounced (as if written)
"Smith". From that point on, when dealing with that person, he _did_ answer
to "Mr /Smith/", even though the records all recorded "Zeitlin".

(The pronunciation that my branch of the family uses is "z(eye)t-lynn",
emphasis on the first syllable. I generally correct any given person
_once_; if, after that, they get anything reasonably close, I'll answer to
it, and several people I work with just call me 'Zee' (there are no less
than three people with the given name 'Jeffrey', so calling any of us
"Jeffrey" or "Jeff"... doesn't work too well).)

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