When properly addressed by a complete stranger, I’ve come to expect very little adroitness in the pronunciation department. Therefore, I’ve come to expect a wide selection of herbal teas, excessive flattery, and sheer awe (generally indicated by non-verbal sighs and other wide-mouth poses). It’s the atypical individual who actually pronounces my last name correctly.
You’d be surprised by some of the weirder variations on the same theme. Since each name has its own flare and baggage. There’s Moesure, which sounds like a placating comment to a sea-parting prophet. While Moysir reminds me of a sauce, plated and requested by a ravenous group unaccustomed to unreasonably dry feast. Mosher is already a thing – the label we bestow on the aimless crowd surfer, hopped up on whatever else (non-human) is being passed around, now left to circumnavigate the concert on fingertips and fists until sliding onto the stage like a pizza pulled out of the oven in the nick of time. Well before the unwanted burning begins. Mozer sounds dangerous. A middle “z” has the power to terrify. Moseeay is the name of French butler, mindlessly twisting his pencil-thin mustache, and ready to wait on you hand and foot. There are many more.
I don’t need to correct people when they get this wrong. They didn’t grow up with my name, so how would they know just by the spelling the right way to say it? I could, when feeling unseasonably generous, extend an olive branch, understanding that there is no one way to say anything. People have myriad of accents and dialects, which all go into speech and pronunciation. I could do what Steve Buscemi does when people say “booshemee” in front of him. Nothing. He does nothing. He knows that “semi” is the correct suffix, but, whatever. It’s his name, after all.
But I’m not going to do that. I am not Steve Buscemi, a kind and generous soul, a retired fireman, Brooklyn resident, and fine actor. I’m not even going to tell you how to say my name. That way, there’s a better chance you get it wrong. I choose to take it personally when people verbally deface my last name. I choose to be offended, reading far too much into every syllabic stumble. It’s a personal slight, of which there can be no magnanimity offered. Either get it right or go home.
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