a monosyllabic surname of ambiguous non-anglo-ethnicity

[trochee]

The Chinese project manager two desks over is on the phone, talking about a project I'm working on. He mis-spells my surname, scrambling the coda consonants. He notices me flinching at the mis-spelling, and corrects himself. He then compares it to "uh, a Persian king yah", hears me laugh, and looks up at me: "what -- no?"

"It's just a name," I said. I don't want to go into the extended history of the consonant sequence, which derives from an old name for one of the Hebrew tribes. It's anglo-homophonous, but not anglo-orthographically identical to the name he's thinking of, nor is it ortho-identical to a certain even-numbered science-fiction sequel. He turns back to the phone. I turn back to my terminal.

"No, I don't think so," he says after a moment. I turn back. He looks up -- "No, I don't think he's Vietnamese," he says to the phone. I sip some coffee, and go back to work.

Comments

[lapartera.livejournal.com]

I laughed out loud at this and immediately called trombo2 to come and read it.

Vietnamese???

[trochee.livejournal.com]

um, consider the (Anglo-)silent consonant. now move it to second position, and copy it to the end as well. google for this and you will find a number of Vietnamese pop stars and an exiled leader or two.

[lapartera.livejournal.com]

OK. Never thought of that!