My first name, Shakyle, is pronounced exactly the way it's spelled (Sha-ky-yul). Yet, many people pronounce it as "Shaquille" (Sha-keel), and it causes me endless annoyance. Normally, I can stand being called many different names, but calling me Shaquille pisses me off. Might not help that my name is an African-North American/Gaelic hybrid even though Kyle is an incredibly common name. It's almost as if people forget how prominent the name Kyle is when they see my name. Thankfully, my other 3 names are also pronounced how they're spelled and not hard to mess up.

One of my friends has a name so apparently difficult to pronounce, he refuses to even let anybody see what it is. He instead goes by his middle name, Henry.

People seem to have a hard time pronouncing my name, Arielle. I'm not really sure why, but nobody seems to get it right. Most people call me Ari now. D:

This troper would never resort to using an English name, even for work purposes. My name is what my parents gave me and is also reflective of my heritage. I will patiently coach you on how to pronounce it or even accept a slight mis-pronounced version of it, but at least show me you make the effort to SAY MY NAME.

...What's your name?

This troper's last name seems to get mispronounced A LOT. Mispronouncing it is also my BerserkButton.

This Troper's last name, which while not be a particularly common Irish name is still easier to pronounce than some he's seen.

I tip my hat to my late friend, Rasolofozafiniainirindraibe Narivony Eric. In a country of overly long names, his parents managed to give him a name too long for even local people to properly pronounce. And then he still goes and makes people remember his name by being an awesome DeadpanSnarker and JerkWithAHeartOfGold whose tear-jerking death caused his ''whole'' school to attend his funeral.

This troper had a middle school teacher whose last name was Kwapisz. (Kwap-ish) The kids tried to call her "K-wap" instead.

This troper has a Serbian last name with multiple j's. In Serbian phonetics j's are pronounced like english y's, thus giving me a lot of trouble. Not to mention a first name that has a character that doesn't appear in english thus forcing me to tell everyone the s is pronounced sh.

This troper went to high school with a girl who had a Czech last name. 8 letters, 1 vowel. Hearing teachers trying to pronounce it for the first time always got a chuckle out of her.

This troper has a Welsh first name and a Gaelic middle name. Welsh is apparently unpronounceable to English speakers because it is one of the few languages which has NO stressed syllables and is also completely phonetic, meaning that every single letter is always pronounced exactly the same way. This troper has three a's in her name, which are all pronounced like the "a" in "cat." This seems like it should actually make things ''easier'', but it is apparently difficult for English speakers to grasp.

In Welsh, the stress goes on the penultimate syllable, with loanwords making up most of the exceptions to that rule.

Because of this, this troper has found that Gaelic is actually ''better'' in terms of this, because even though written Gaelic is nearly indecipherable, this troper has found that the pronunciations are quite easy, once you learn what it says. For example, the name "Eillishe", which looks quite complicated on paper, is really pronounced "AY-lish", which is easy. This troper's middle name looks far more complex than the first, but once people are told how to say it, they can often say it way before the first name.

This troper has a Gaelic name as well, I had a teacher who didn't say it right although I corrected her once a week for the entire year.

This troper also has a Welsh first name - Myfanwy. People can't deduce the pronunciation from the spelling, or the other way round.

Really? It's Muh-fan-wy, isn't it?

My-fan-way?

Welsh 'f' == English 'v'. Oddly, I know an Australian woman called Myfany (without the 'w') ... her name rhymes with Tiffany. AdaptationDecay?

This troper has a real first name which is unpronounceable to all but few people who read it. Subverted, in the fact that said name is the relatively simple 'Angharad'.

Interestingly, people seem to have a far harder time saying 'Angharad' than many names which are much more visually complex. Something about all those vowels doesn't agree with people, I suspect.

Um, doesn't that name contain a voiceless nasal phoneme, which ''is'' hard for English speakers since it doesn't occur in our language?

Voiceless nasals only exist at the start of a word with a nasal mutation (as in the second word of 'yng Nghaerdydd', = in Cardiff). In this case, as there's a syllable break between the letters 'ng' and 'h' (yes, 'ng' is a single letter), English speakers can pronounce them separately, just as they would the consonants in the English 'bang' and 'hat'.

This troper's own grandfather can't pronounce her name (he says KNEE-saw). Nyssa doesn't seem that difficult... (Yes, it is from Series/DoctorWho). The "y" is like the "i" in Kim, and the "a" is pronounced "uh".

This Troper had the opposite problem- her name is pronounced KNEE-sa but everyone pronounces it NIH-sa. And it's spelled exactly the same.

This troper's first name is Mari. It's a great big shock whenever someone pronounces it right. One person has actually ''argued'' with me over the pronunciation of my own damn name.

This troper once had a Ms. Wozolyck as a teacher. The right pronunciation? Vo-WOSH-ick - her family has some very Dutch heritage.

What? I'm Dutch, but to me it looks a lot more like polish. A Dutch pronunciation would be close to English, I guess.

Definitely not Polish.

This troper lives in possibly the single most unpronounceable town in all of Pennsylvania. Its name is taken from a Native American word meaning, approximately, "thirsty ground." Troper likes to joke with the unsuspecting that it's a Native American word meaning "small town by the airport."

This troper has a last name that nobody can ever pronounce (or spell) right, so I've decided to just change it to something easier once I can (I'm still in high school).

This Troper's real name isn't LeighSabio it's... well, I tend to be a little paranoid about giving out my real name online, because it's so uncommon. It is also sufficiently uncommon and easily confusable with other, more common names, that people tend to get it wrong.

This Troper has taken to asking to be called Miss K., as her 3-syllable name has at least 2 sounds unfamiliar to English ears. Her first name is 4 letters and 1 syllable long, but even that seems insurmountable to British people.

This troper's last name is Cardon. Six letters, two syllables, no silent letters. Seems easy enough, right? Yet NO ONE seems to be able to pronounce it correctly. I've heard "Cordon," "Car''done''", "Carbon," "Carter," "Corbon," and a multitude of others. For the record, the correct pronunciation is "Car-dun" with the emphasis on the first syllable.

This troper's friend is named Keyvan. Said like it's written. Very few people can ever pronounce it correctly. A small in-joke amongst us is: "Say 'key'." "Key." "Say 'van'." "Van." "Say 'Keyvan'." (while going crosseyed) "BILLIBOB!"

It's "keey-van"? I thought it was "kay-van."

This troper's first name is Ruairi. This is actually a fairly phonetic rendering of the name considering many of the alternative ways of spelling it, and the pronunciation is simply 'Roo-ree'. Whilst it's unsurprising that people wouldn't be able to spell it first go, or read it aloud the first time, you would be simply amazed at how many people find pronouncing it difficult even after I tell them...

This Troper has never seen ANYONE pronounce her first name correctly. (Kimber Leigh, with the 'Leigh' said like 'Lay', not 'Lee') Her surname is even less pronounceable. She doesn't bother correcting people anymore.

This Troper has a few. There's a student in her class who is an immigrant from India. It's always hilarious when someone attempts to read his last name. Especially funny when he's called down to the office via school announcements over the PDA. They're always like, "Var- ... Varuun Sub-... Subas... chun... drian?" Of course, they were incorrect. Then they just started calling him "V".

I recommend you to memorize V's Introduction.

This troper would first like to quote from the main page: #QUOTE# On the {{Discworld}} demons are given names that look like they were selected by headbutting a keyboard; when the demon [=WxrtHltl=]-jwlpklz introduces himself in Discworld/WyrdSisters, Nanny Ogg quips "Where were you when the vowels were handed out, behind the door?" Her co-witch, Granny Weatherwax, pronounces it without raising a sweat.

This troper will now explain that she played Granny in a stage production, and while that bit is very effective in text, on stage it ''doesn't'' work. (The problem isn't so much pronouncing it as it is getting both actors to pronounce it the same way.) She ended up calling the demon Mr. Pickles.

My (Slovene) cousin is named Ksenija (pronounced like Xenia.) Hearing teachers and the like attempt to pronounce her name is a great source of lulz.

This troper's French name is so unpronounceable that one of her profs. used to just point and say "you" when he was calling on her.

This troper's grandma was never capable of pronouncing his name right. My name (Rodney) isn't that hard to pronounce at all, although my grandma would always pronounce it as "Ronnie", which annoys me.

This troper's last name, full stop. Also his first name, on occasion, but doing that has rather... unpleasant consequences.

In all actuality, my surname isn't difficult to pronounce, when you remember that the 'oe' letter combination is pronounced like a 'u'. It isn't exactly unpronounceable, but I've heard guesses ranging from, 'Foe-ay-ahd' to 'Feed', and I really don't know how they got that. Similarly, talking to my Australian friend over the phone becomes extremely fun when he tries to pronounce the names of the first two Indonesian presidents (Soekarno and Soeharto, actually pronounced Sukarno and Suharto).

This Troper has one friend called "Kyeirah" (kiy-EAR-a), another called "Isata" (i-sa-TA, NOT i-SA-ta), and my own name (Madeleine) is constantly mispronounced. It's not "ma-deh-line" it's "ma-de-lane"!!

This troper had a Polish classmate with an unpronounceable last name. I can't remember the exact spelling, but it had several c's and a z. Confused the hell out of everyone.

This troper has a last name no one can pronounce on their first try, but strangely it gets mispronounced in the same way a lot.

How hard can my name be to pronounce? It is a simple two syllables, but apparently people always manage to find a way to pronounce it wrong. Wen-Chiao. In reading that you probably pronounced wrong. pronounced ˈwen ˈchau̇ or, if you will, When Chow.

Taren... how frikkin' hard can it possibly be to pronounce Taren? And yet somehow, everyone ThisTroper meets manages to butcher it.

Guiab. Pronounced Gee-ub. Not Gwab, not Gyab. Not anything else you can think of that Guiab would sound like. The only people I know that get it right, is my family and friends of the family.

My first thought was "Gwee-ab." How the heck does anyone think you're called "Gwab"?

This troper has a last name that nobody can pronounce. Ironically, the French spelling didn't get bungled when my great grandparents came here from Belgium in the early 1900s.

You'd be surprised how many people find it hard to pronounce the name "Ferdinand".

Even ''I'm'' not sure how to pronounce my last name. Add in a NorthernIreland accent and the results get creative. On a plus, I can tell which telemarketers and spammers use which database of info by the unique spelling.

Plenty of people have difficulty pronouncing my last name. After a while, you get over it. When people mispronounce 'Patricia,' on the other hand...

A Palestinian friend of mine prefers to be called "Farah" (yes, like FarahFawcett) instead of her real name. Even by her friends who ''can'' pronounce it. I forget what it really is, except that it had lots of j's and k's. And don't get me started on her ''last'' name.

Lakota names in general. It gets harder in the eastern dialect, where all those l's become d's.

This Troper's grandfather found other people had so much trouble with his surname (even other Poles), he changed it. It was Prezpiora, and though the troper's Polish anthropology prof theorized it might be missing a k that is what his papers say, in Polish and Russian as well (as there wasn't a Poland at the time he emigrated.) It means 'little bird' and so he changed it to the name of a type of bird. Between that and her anglicized given name, this troper sounds more like she comes from the Isle of Man than an entirely Slavic background.

Benedickt Tom Isaac's real name is Izsák (EE-shzahck) Tamás (tah-maash) Benedek (beh-neh-deck). If you're not fluent in Hungarian, there's no way you will ever pronounce it correctly.

One of this troper's classmates is half Dutch. 'Jeroen' isn't that hard a name to pronounce, but everyone calls him Urine. Teachers pronounce it 'Yu-RIN'. Except the one who calls him 'Jeerion' or something equally not anything resembling his name.

This troper has spent his entire life listening to people mangle his last name. The distressing thing is, it's Italian: It's pronouced exactly the way it's spelled.

In this troper's high school, there were ''five'' students who had nigh-unpronounceable surnames. They got their own two pages in the Senior Yearbook to talk about their names and the funny variations people tried for them. (One of the girls had a surname was that also ridiculously long, but was pronounced like "Louse.")

This troper has the last name Kott (It's Polish if you were wondering). Sounds simple right? However, people love to pronounce it knot.

TheLibby of my school was born in Russia, and only she can pronounce her last name. Most people refer to it as "M-something".

I've had this german sub teacher at my school called Mister Schwertfeger. He doesn't let us call him Mister S and his nameis a whole lot harder to say correctly than it looks. It also doesn't help that he is the most imtimidating person i've ever met. I'd really like to know how it is pronounced correctly.

This troper knows someone named "Elysia". It's super easy to pronounce (ee-lee-see-ah) and most of the students in the school get it right on the first try with no problem. Teachers, however... I've heard them call her things like "Alicia", "Ellysa", and the worst one: "Eliza". Really, folks? Eliza?

This troper's Mandarin Chinese friend is not helping in this case. Apparently her last name is said like a question, and the closest we've ever gotten to her ''first'' name was "seizure". Thankfully she just goes under her English name with us.