MereBelle007 said:

itsmyworld said:

My name isn't all that different but you rarely hear it for a female. I was getting on a ski lift the other day and this guy was looking at my season pass and goes, "How do you say your name?" Trust me, you say it the way it looks. I get comments like that a lot. I also get, "So… is that short for something?" I feel for Stana. Correcting people or having to reply every time someone says, "So… that is unqiue. Where did that come from?" gets old so quickly.

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gosh, i know that feeling.  it would be a miracle if someone heard my name and didn't comment on it. 
 

Join the club. My name can be pronounced two ways- long a and long i or short a and short i. Most people here (USA) pronounce it with a short a, long i. My name also ends in an a- It's been pronounced with an i. And I've been called everything from Jessica, to Isabella, to Radhika- none of which are my name. So yes, I do know how you feel.

It's pretty common for people/families to come over to America and either change the spelling or pronunciation of ther name. My great grand parents changed their last name from Mueller to Miller when they emigrated from Hungrary.

halaci said:

Alie said:

It's pretty common for people/families to come over to America and either change the spelling or pronunciation of ther name. My great grand parents changed their last name from Mueller to Miller when they emigrated from Hungrary.

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Such a small world…
 

Honestly I think her name is AWSOME. It's all foreign and really cool. I kinda wish my mom named Stana. Actually scrape that I REALLY wanted my mom to name me Stana

In the US, it's pretty tough to get people to pronounce a name in a way other than the way it LOOKS like it should be pronounced.  I suspect her family, or Stana herself, got tired of correcting people and decided to live with it.  And I think her first name is very pretty. 

KalliopePL said:

That's the most probable, getting tired of correcting people all the time and deciding to live with it. But it's really great that some of her cast mates are willing to learn the correct pronounciation of her surname – first Ruben Santiago-Hudson and now Jon Huertas 

Because they know how it feels!! I can imagine at least Jon having to pronounce his name for many people.

Actually, I believe I read somewhere (a long time ago) that when Stana's parents moved to the greater Chicago area (which was when she was a toddler), her parents already had relatives named Katic in the area.  At least I know that there are several related Katic's in that general area of Northern Illinois.  So, it's likely her parents went along with the pronunciation of the other Katics in the area since they were related. 

One branch of my ancestors immigrated from Germany around the time of the 7-Years War, settled in Pennsylvania, and shortly after the American Revolution, changed the spelling of their name from Gülcher to Gilger.   I speculate that they didn't want to be taken for Hessian mercenaries, as well as the name would have been mis-pronounced as Gulcher, as in "dry-gulcher."  They chose a spelling that most nearly matched the phonetic pronunciation they wanted and adopted their new name with their new country. 

mutha_nite said:

majster said:

Well in Poland there would be no problem with the correct pronunciation. 

 

I still laugh at the way Castle writters took common polish surname "Szymański" and changed the letters so it would be easy to say for the cast. ( season 2 episode 8: Caleb Shimansky in Kill the Messenger )

George Carlin once said, "You can spell your name 'Smith' and pronounce it 'Szymanski' if you want to.  They're all silent – never mind."  Having an unusual surname means you spend your life educating people, or you learn to answer to many phonemic equivalents.

Well, my Deutschlander friends would wonder why Americans have trouble pronouncing 'Gitschlag', but I've grown up with all kinds when answering roll calls. Whenever I heard "Gibson", "Here", "Uhhh" (or even a long pause) I knew I was next and would answer anyway. Fortunately my kids didn't have that problem as I now live in a Schweizerdeutsch community.

Man, that math only left one toe unaccounted for.