How do people mispronounce your Polish names?

Interesting thread. I went through four years in the US Navy as "Ski", even though after a while most of my shipmates knew more or less how to pronounce my name. This doesn't only happen to Polish people though - in the Navy I had a Thai friend who was known to everyone simply as "Swani" - his last name stenciled on his uniform was wider than the pocket over which it appeared.

Honestly though, you can't really expect people to know how to pronounce last names in all of the world's languages. If your name's Brzęczyszczykiewicz, you either have to deal with the hassle or change it to Smith or something. Of course then in Poland you'll be Mr. Smis or Smit, depending on who you talk to.

They just have to shorten and put nicknames on everything in English, anyway, even when there's no real need to. (And no matter if it's British or American.) Even officially, they call themselves Les, Joe, Dave, Harry, Jerry, Ben, Tony... For me, it's a bit funny that the U.S. even had a president simply called "Bill" like an old mate of yours from the local pub. And when they happen to find a foreign name that can't easily be shortened to their liking, they break their tongues in the rush. :)

My name is István [pron. E-SH-T-V-AH-N], which is hard for them to pronounce at first, but as it is quite international, I usually just tell them to call me Steve. Surprising as it is, but quite a few people have realised so far that it is the same name as Steven, Stéphane, Stefan, Stefano, Esteban etc. in different parts of Europe.

Polish people have no problems to say it, btw!! ;)

(P.S. one more classic: I've got a friend named Máté (i.e. Matt), but they just call him "mate"...)

My last name is Myszka. ive heard My-eetz-ka.
myska
meeastzka

and my grandmothers last name is soczka.
ive heard

SOCK-tzka.

Funny, but so true. My name is Melanie and I cannot tell you how many people call me Mel. I hate being called Mel and refuse to answer to it. When I was dating my Polish friend, I insisted my students pronounce his name correctly (I even taught them how to greet him properly in Polish). He loved it and they eventually started calling me Wacheekski a combination of his last name and mine.

Too bad the new last name outlasted the relationship, but it is true that the English speaking countries don't take time to respect and learn more about each other by appreciating a good name!

ha. my last name is Wojcik.

My last is name is also Pokrzywa. I didn't find out that I had been brought up pronouncing it wrong until I was in high school. My grandfather was from Poland but my poor southern grandmother could never say it right, so she just said "Po-chee-va".

I have gotten many many variations, the most common ones probably being "Pock-riz-wah" and "Poker-zee-wa". My dad's nickname in the military was "Porky", and growing up I was called everything from "pork n' beans" to "poke and sniff". Kids can be mean.

I cannot stand it when people add in the "R" sound in the middle and say "Pour-chee-va".

Why don't they just call you "Stinging Nettle"?

I just died laughing :)


HELL if I won't agree with that!

Grzegorz's post must have been deleted, though.

Anyways, my name is Grzegorz, too. And it is often prounounced as:
Greh-zeh-goh-rehz. That is if someone can get through first few letters.

Usually it looks like that:
-Grehz......
-Yeah, that's me!

Thread attached on merging:
MISPRONOUCNED POLISH LAST NAMES

Americans of Polish extraction can rightfully envy their east Slavonic neighbours whose names are in general pronounced correctly in the USA. The reason is simple.

An eastern Хмелницкий simply transcribes his surname into English as Hmyelnitsky and Чарковский becomes Charkovsky.
A Pole named Chmielnicki or Czarkowski would end up having his surname Anglo-mangled into some God-awful Chimmel-Nicky or Zar-Cow-Ski.
Szumiacki ends up sounding like a Japanese restaurant entré: soo-mee-ya-kee.
And you can imagine a first former named Dombkowski on his first day of school and class mates taunting him with: Does your DUMB COW SKI?

Even Czechs and Slovaks named Novak do not have to go through life being called NO-WHACK the way a Polish Nowak does.
There is really no solution except respelling the name phonetically: Yablonski (Jabłoński) or patiently correcting each and every Anglo-mangler.
People with lots of cheek may counterattack like a lady I once knew named Wróblewski. When someone addressed her as Mrs Rob-a-loose-key, she would shoot straight back: ROB A LOOSE KEY? HELL, I WOULDN't EVEN WANT TO ROB A TIGHT KEY! Often the Anglo-mangler would become flustered and stammer: Ah, er, um, you mean that's not how you pronounce it?

Have any of you encountered such problems? Haqve have you deaklt with them?

HA HA,
My name is KRAWCZYK. Below are some names that I was called

Kruschev
Crawl chick
Crow ****
Krawcek
Krawz
There were others that I wont even want to try..
I just laughed.
I remember going into the Army and standing for my first roll call.. When they got to my name, the just looked bewildered..

from my experience: the only solution (if someone doesnt wanna to change its surname) is to explain it to every person who try to pronounce polish surname.

My office boss was telling me about my coworker in another office named Shemmik. I said I hadn't heard of him.
Laters as I was looking at documents, I saw the writer was named Przemek. That was not who my boss said, so I kept working.

Then I learned proper Polish orthography. I realized Przemek is pronounced /pʃemek/ and my boss was getting rid of the P. Where did the P go? It was weird to talk with my boss later, as I said /pʃemek/ and he said /ʃemek/, and that was supposed to be the same person.

Alas, I never met Przemek to find out how he pronounced his own first name.

There was also a Trzcinski in my office. That took FURTHER STUDYING of orthography before I was sure of that. But nobody cared about the Polish way.

I speak Polish fluently, but I'm practically illiterate reading the language... I mispronounce most names.

It is just a case of certain sounds and sound combinations not being common in other languages. My name is Iain which is very vowel heavy and the people I work with in Poland struggle with it so I get called Janek or Jaszek in work.

I have never heard anyone try to pronounce my second name over here so I am not sure if it would be the same or different. For the record, second name is the same as user name.

ther was a joke and it goes something like that

the first lesson in the primary school and kids are introducing themselves:

- my name is anna but parents call me ania
- my name is stanislaw but parents call me stasiu
- my name is krystyna but parents call me krysia
- ...
at last jasio stands up and sais
- my name is jasio but parents call me 'you little son of a bitch'

My mother-in-law's first name (and my wife's middle name) is Zdzislawa. To this day, I cannot get it out of my mouth properly. I am having a TON of problems with the Zdz thing. I don't have the dexterity in my tongue to make that quick stop and continuance in the name.

If I don't call her mom, I call my mother-in-law "Slawa"

Hmmmm, are most polish last names tongue-twisters to non-polish types? I'm reading all the stories about mispronunciation and thinking, "hmmmm, his last name is four letters and spelled rather phonetically."

No, they're not, but when a foreigner (without any basic knowledge of Polish, which is rather common in the world) sees a 10-15 letters long name s/he panics thinking it will be too hard to pronounce, then even very simple names (like for example Nowakowski - pronounced quite smoothly) scare the speaker.

Other thing is that people try to apply their own language rules for Polish spelling, or what is even worse - English rules, this way with a name built of sounds common (or similar) in many popular languages, people make an useless hassle for themselves.

Let's take for example Polish "rz" and "ż" (pronounced like French and Portuguese "j" and similar to the English sound in the ending -sure in treasure, leisure etc.) - but most people will try to pronounce it as "r+z", "r" or "z".

Same with Polish "sz" (close to "sh" in English, "ch" in French, "sci" (without the "i") in Italian, "sch" in German) - many foreigners try to say it as 2 separate sounds (s+z) which is hardly doable.

or "drz" and "dż" - similar to English "j/g" (in John/George), French "dj" (maybe not an official sound, but even said as "d+j" is still close to Polish, besides most people heard of jazz music, so they know the sound), Italian "g" before "e/i" (gettare/giocare).

There are only a few sounds (soft consonants "ć", "ś", "ź", "dź" that may be problematic, because many people don't hear the difference in those pairs "ć-cz", "ś-sz", "ź-ż/rz", "dź=dż/drz"). Other serious trouble may be the consonant clusters, more common in Polish than in English (Szczakiel = sh + ch + akyel, but people try to make it harder, s+z+c+z - I couldn't pronounce it either :)

The fact that we use "w" for the sound represented with "v" in many languages creates another problem (at least not for the Germans who also chose "w" for the Latin "v").

Yeah, where I'm from we have a lot of "scary" names. I think most of the people I know are smart enough to know that you don't pronounce "sz" the way you would in English, but seeing consonants together and not knowing what sound they make.....

I was just looking at all the last names listed here and wondering if they're typical or just getting mentioned because they're so fun to butcher.

I am the proud owner of a German last name that gets butchered just as badly, but I think it's easy. *sigh*

Most first names and surnames mentioned in this thread are normal, some of them rare (like Trzop), some very common (Grzegorz, Krawczyk)

Brzęczyszczykiewicz is a movie example (from a famous WWII commedy - Jak rozpętałem drugą wojnę światową, How I started the World War II) used by a fugitive prisoner to embarass a German officer, who can't spell this name. I don't know people with such a surname, but it's not hard to pronounce for a Pole:

Movie fragment on you tube (67 seconds)

But foreigners seem to have a problem with it:

If I'm speaking English, I usually don't roll the r in anyone's name, and I usually miss it out entirely if it's before another consonant or in the final position of an utterance. That's just an English thing though.


Easy!

The factory where i work has around 60 staff and about half of them are polish now. When they do a fire drill it used to take about 90 seconds to to do a roll call (the managers shout our last names we answer here etc) using the names on our clock cards to check we were all out of the building. Now with the polish last names it take about 15 minutes because none of the polish or the english know who the hell they are calling. It gives us all a laugh, but not when its raining or cold and we are stood in the middle of a car park...its also a little dangerous if you think about it.

Without being performed by a professionally trained vocal practitioner, Polish names can actually cause medical problems.


You haven't met any multilingual donkeys then?
youtube.com/watch?v=fW0J9G1Jz9A

I saw my name written down by a Polish chap a couple of days ago. Various bits of it were missing and an L had been turned into an R. So from now on I might deliberately mispronounce his name.

The mine is Klimczak
So i have most of the time : Klimzak... I also Had Klimes,Klimkaz(don't ask me how ^^),Klimkzak and Klimtsak
dobra wieczor za wszyscy

My Kaszëbsczi (Kashubian) name with distorted German phonetic spelling is being butchered equally bad by both English and Polish speaking people :D

Send me a PM. I think we are related....

John P.

You are John Nettle? England had an actor called John Nettles. Bergerac if I'm not mistaken.

Yes...
I am named after an annoying plant.....

:)

John P.

Leocadia

Would someone help me pronounce this name, please.

L
e as in shed, bed (always pronounced the same)
aw - Polish o is spoken like aw in saw, raw etc
k
a - like in barn but shorter
d
y or i
a - always pronounced the same (i.e. like in barn)

Le'awkadya