What’s In a Name?
Gustafson. Gus. Taf. Son. Three little syllables, pronounced pretty much exactly as they are spelled, and yet it confounds people daily. It seems easy to me, but then I did grow up with it. Gustafson is a common Swedish name. There are a lot us in North Dakota and Minnesota. And in Sweden, I assume. But outside of those areas, it’s a strange alien expression, apparently unpronounceable by human mouths. People stare at it and try to sound it out as if it contained letters they’ve never seen before.
I wouldn’t really mind, if it were just a matter of stressing the wrong syllable, or using a long vowel sound instead of the short. But the most common mispronunciations involve extra syllables, or letters being transposed. “Gust-a-fa-son” is typical, as is “Gufstason,” for some reason. And then there are those for whom the mere sight of the name seems to disrupt verbal communication entirely. The grocery store clerks who look at my receipt before handing it to me, saying, “Thank you, Mr. G… G…”
My Dad has a clever trick to train people how to form the proper sounds. He tells them “Say ‘gust of wind.’ Now say ‘gust of son’.” It works, and it wins him a lot more friends than barking, “It’s Gustafson!” with the implied “…you idiot” just beneath the surface, which is my preferred method.
My strangely unpronounceable name plagued me for eighteen years before I met someone who had it even worse than I. Not only is Al’s surname, Fukalek, difficult to pronounce, but people are embarrassed to try to sound it out. And no, it’s not pronounced the way it’s spelled. He sometimes tells people that it rhymes with “bucolic,” but for some, that only confuses the matter more. As our About page says, it is pronounced “few-COLIC”. (Hardly surprising that it’s Czechoslovakian. I mean really, who puts a “Z” after a “C”?)
Anyway, here we are, “Gustafson and Fukalek”. Probably not the best pair of names to put on the cover of a book. It lacks the simple accessibility of “Lee and Kirby” or “Eastman and Laird”. Maybe we should have come up with pen names. Stanley Lieber — AKA Stan Lee — would approve. But I figure that if Bill Sienkiewicz and Mark Teixeira can make it in this business, then so can we. Of course, their massive talents may have helped them overcome their unwieldy names, but still…
I also have a name that people sometimes have trouble pronouncing when they see it. Just to stick out, my ancestors decided to put a couple of unnecessary letters in there, so in my case it’s understandable. But in general I think it’s a matter of people learning words instead of syllables, which is why you’re supposed to be able to raed txet werhe olny the fstirt and lsat lteter are in the rhgit pacels. I suppose that’s how certain Asian languages work as well, where they use symbols for whole words rather than for each sound.
What I love most about having to spell FUKALEK is starting off by telling the person F-U….
What is so hard about your name…sheesh the school system our parents saddled our kids with.
Be glad your last name isn’t schiffner. On the plus side I’ve heard it mangled so many ways that when (rarely) someone comes up with a new one. Accidentally or purposely, well. I’m not mad, rather I’m impressed with their intelligence and quick wit and say so…then I pound them to mud puddles and hide the body. ;^)