This morning I had my first accounting class. Because it was the first class, the teacher was required to take attendance. Usually, attendance is an easy task--shouting names of students, said students raise their hand. However, when the names are completely unpronounceable in the English language, attendance turns into a comedy of errors. So my poor teacher goes through the register, trying to correctly say names that only make sense in Asia and completely butchered every syllable in the process.
The best part of it all is that a lot of the Asian students have come up with alternate names for themselves. Example:
Miss Morley: Yoo-yung-kai? Yo-yang-kae?
Student: I go by 'Danny'
Miss Morley: Dan?
Student: No, Danny.
How he got 'Danny' from his real name is beyond me. This happened with almost every other Asian name, except for one girl who wanted to be called 'Yoo'. That might get confusing, she must respond to a lot of people she doesn't know. We also had an Elizabeth, Kevin, Brian, and Ken. It's like everyone took their names from Barbie's playhouse.
When it got to my name in the middle of the list, she pronounced it correctly, and looked at me with a mixture of desperation and sarcasm and said, "do you go by Anna?" Lucky for her I do.
PS I learned that my Williams nickname, "Momo", actually means 'peach' in Japanese!
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