I have started collecting screenshots of things that people have addressed me as in work.
"Leave" and "Niamph" are my favourites so far.

by EvilKaniamhil

39 comments

  1. Related to this, I see people in work who have their name in phonetics in their signature 😆

  2. Last one is great. Reminds me of ‘Good evening sir, would you please leave without a fuss right now’.

  3. God? It’s like they’re trying to spell pregante or something?

  11. We decided against that name for our daughter because we live in Germany and it would have been a bit silly on a daily basis, to be honest. Her second name is Irish, though (not Niamh), so there’s still some potential for questions retained, to everyone’s delight.

  12. My daughter in Oz feels your pain with the name Aoife

  13. I’d be more annoyed at the “liebeR Niamh” implying you’re a man!

  14. Lol, I mean unlike Americans atleast English isn’t their first language.

  15. Haha, whoever wrote Leave is probably thinking of the Dutch name Lieve

  16. Similar thing happens with Polish people called Tomasz here in Ireland (pronounced tom-ash).

    It’s like the Irish brain goes “no H = pronounced Tomás”.

  17. I assume sending these messages would require the use of an email address or something with the correct spelling of your name in order to get to you.

    Even if you email n.surname the display name or previous messages you sent will have Niamh in them.

  18. Try being called “Brian” in any country. Invariably any emails received start with “Hi Brain” !

  19. It’s so frustrating!! I’m utterly used to my name being butchered and it’s not the most difficult one at all. I’m doing a voluntary project and yday at the 4th meeting still *every time* someone tried to refer to a woman called Manekse (sp? Haven’t seen her name written) there would be multiple people chiming in trying to pronounce her name right, I feel awful for her. And this is in a super multinational city and the group is all from different countries. People could do so much better about this super basic chance for respect!

  20. To be fair, you lot never spell my name correctly either.

    Karper

    Casper

    Gaspar

    … To name a few. My name seems to strike the right balance of sounding familiar enough to guess and that guess usually being wrong lol.

  21. Reminds me of me and the umlaut in my surname when dealing with English-speakers. 😀

  22. Hilarious, my name is Niamh and i live in Germany. The issue with my name is that the germans pronounce it with an f sound at the end. “Nief”. It sound very much like the word Mief which means bad smell. I actually chucked the N about 13years back and everybody calls me “Eve” which they are very capable of pronouncing🙄. Anybody thinking about calling their child Niamh in Germany…DON’T!! Plus they assume Niamh is a dudes name.

  23. Seems very similar to my experience living in Ireland with an Irish name.

  24. Never been in southern Germany or Austria..but I’ve had two queries in Hamburg about it. Had to take out the phone and Google Enda Stevens and Enda Kenny to prove it to them.

  25. Can’t understand the love for Irish names. No one wants to have to spell a name like fucking Niamh or Tadhg. Just get better parents..

  26. I have 9 vowels, 4 consonants and three fadas in my full name. In work in Berlin everyone called me by my first name rather than Herr *Unpronounceable*.

  27. When I used to still go to Starbucks and they do the names schtick, whenever I went to on holidays I’d tell them to spell how they feel.

    I don’t want to associate my name explicitly with this account, but the best cup name one I got was “Jaymousse” from Belgium.

    Honourable mention to a Welsh friend ‘Iolo’ who got ‘*Gorlock*’ in France.

  28. Its not unique to the German language, I work for a UK company and despite doing a ton of work in Ireland they haven’t a clue what most of our names are.

  30. Lmao this is fantastic. If you want a laugh, ask Italians to try and pronounce any Irish names – there are just too many vowels

  31. I left twitter because

    a) I used the Irish spelling of my name

    b) I tweeted a random picture of Dublin on a nice day out with a hashtag like “Ireland” or “lovingDublin” or something

    c) someone with an Irish flag in his bio told me to take my stupid name back to the zebras in Africa

  33. My colleague Niamh was called “Nymph” by an Italian yesterday

  36. If it’s any consolation, they can’t spell German names correctly in Germany either.

  37. Similar story here! My poor Dutch landlady just could not spell Meadhbh. I saved all her attempts:

    – Meadhbd
    – Maedhbh
    – Meadhbhb
    – Maebt
    – Maedhbd
    – Maedhb
    – Maethbh
    – Maethb
    – Maeth
    – Meth (my favourite OFC)

  38. At least one of them spelled it right though! I’d say that’s a fairly good margin of error!

    One fella I know called Concubhar earned the nickname Concubine due to a rather hilarious interpretation by a German.

  39. As a none Irish fellow, can somebody write the name in IPA?

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