What's in a name

I was named with a "good Norwegian name." It wasn't until I was 17 that I met someone with the same name (she, on the other hand, had met at least one other by that time!). People mispronounced it more often than not. It didn't lend itself to a cool nickname. My mother made up a knock-knock joke with it, referencing a post-Civil War-era folksong that - to this day - I have never heard sung by anyone other than her.

As an adult, I embrace it and answer to my name, as well as any other pronunciations that might be directed my way. I've met a great many more identi-names, as well as many who pronounce theirs differently (but mine, of course, is the "right" way).

Just a couple of years ago I decided it was time to help the common folk strike the right vowel sound with their first attempt. I consulted a dictionary and added an umlaut to my email signature.

Nobody knows what the umlaut is supposed to do.

As best I can tell, it serves to create a brief pause upon greeting, as my greeter mentally estimates just how far wrong he might be in guessing how to say it. Consequently, after the pause, my name commonly is spoken as a question. Even my husband (in humor, I suppose), draws out the vowel sound in a conglomeration of short-and-long sounds that emulate no known spoken tongue.

My mother, the Norwegian who could be to blame for this in the first place, was incensed to see the umlaut printed upon my business cards.

Təf.