M as in Markowitz, A as in Arkowitz...

I get so cranky when people pronounce my name wrong. Markowitz- why does that trip people up? Do their eyes immediately focus on the Z and confuse it with a Polish name like Pzyokosnyzki? Because that shit is hard to pronounce. Senka's Serbian last name gets me every time. You know what else is hard to pronounce? Nyugen. Somehow that’s pronounced “Win,” which I’ll never be able to wrap my head around. But guess what people. There are no effing mysterious missing letters in Markowitz! No letters that stand proud but don’t get uttered. No confusing “SH” or “TH” popping up in there either. Every letter has its own sound. In order. Not “Favre” pronounced “Farv”- just every letter, in its rightful place, making its most-used sound. You can say Mar-KOH-witz if you must- my dean did at graduation after I specifically instructed her not to, and she’s still alive to talk about it- but just give it the ol’ college try! When traveling to Advance, MO I heard the dispatcher say to the van driver in St. Louis “I’ve got an Allison Mar…oh there’s no way I can pronounce this” and I pretty much turned into a cartoon mad-person, red faced, smoke out of ears, train engine going chooo chooooooo! I get that in St. Louis everyone is apparently named John Smith and Brittany Jones. (I mean in Tree Hill, NC your last name is probably from the Mayflower- James, Scott, Davis, Sawyer OH WAIT don’t forget Jake Jagowski, our token ethnic minority who is still white! Or Skillz, the black guy who doesn’t have a last name. Dear God why do I watch this show…) But if you can read, you can pronounce my last name. That is all. Doesn’t help that I’m on track to marry a man where I’ll spend the rest of my life talking to stranger with a resigned sigh, saying “It’s Moron with an I.”

Crankpants OUT