People have been mispronouncing my last name (Finke, pronounced fink-ee) my whole life. Usually, they make the mistake of dropping the “e” (Fink); I don’t really mind or even notice this anymore, since “Fink” was an obvious nickname bestowed upon me all through elementary and high school, but occasionally there’s a creative soul who goes with a long “i” and says “Fienk” (rhymes with, uh, nothing, but has the same i-sound as “bike”). Since most of my interaction with other people is on the Web and via e-mail (a notoriously silent medium), I wouldn’t doubt it if 95% of the people I communicate with every week aren’t sure how to pronounce my name.
Mike Cassano, a guy I met at the University of Minnesota during the Chipmark project, has come up with a fun solution to this pronunciation problem, and it’s called “Name Out Loud.” Basically, you go to their website, hit “Record” on a little flash app, say your (ahem) name out loud, and their app saves your recording so that your Internet friends can hear exactly how you pronounce your name.
Here’s how to pronounce my name, Christopher Finke.
It’s a neat idea, and it definitely would have saved this guy some trouble.
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