The massacre of my (good)name

I've been in the US of A for five years and have probably heard a gazillion variations of the way my name could be pronounced. You would think nothing would surprise me anymore but yet, people are ingenious (and mostly indigenous) and keep springing up newer variations. In India my last name was funny for a lot of people who thought that the sex-hain na or sexy-na was a tribute to their sense of humor. I found it lame and unoriginal. At least, these make me laugh. Here are a few of them.

I was in Florida. This lady takes my credit card and jots down my name. Here's what the receipt has written on it:

Turum Sekana. Probably she was dyslexic, right?

This is funnier:

"So you spell your name as T A R U N: that's, T0-raaan"? like seriously?????

Most people will call me: Troooon or Taa-rin....what's that about??

Now this guy came to my school to interview for the position of a professor and all the grad students had to meet him. So we had to introduce ourselves to him. A lot of the students were from Asia. I was the first person he asked to introduce themselves. Here's how my conversation with him went:

Him: "What's your name? Who do you work with?"
Me: Tarun. I work with Dr.Hasenwinkel
Him: Whats that...Duddle?
Me: Tarun.
Him: Duddle?
Me: Tarun.
Him: Duddle??
I turn to Pam who is American. "Pam can you help me out here"?
Pam: Ta-rooon
Him: Oh Trooon.
Me: Thanks, Pam (with a straight face).

That was the end of the introduction session for him, considering the number of asians in the audience. I mean, how on earth does Tarun sound like Duddle? This was by far the funniest experience I've had with my name's semantics.

I've been called Tyrone, Tarin, Troon etc. with the T sounding as the T in Tomato, Saxena as how you would pronounce Sax-ophone and countless other variations, some of them too hard for me to pronounce!

Well apparently the sound of a person's name is the sweetest to their ears. I don't know what to think. That doesn't sound right to me. Talk about bittersweet.

A funny fiftieth!

Courtesy: Dr.Joe Chaiken

Thought for the day

The irony of commitment is that it's deeply liberating- in work, in play, in love. The act frees you from the tyranny of your internal critic, from the fear that likes to dress itself up and parade around as rational hesitation. To commit is to remove your head as the barrier to your life.

-- Anne Moriss