Pronunciation

For 22 years of my life, my last name was Krug. Everyone pronounced it like it rhymed with drug. And it doesn't. So it was annoying. When your name is mispronounced, it is frustrating. You can only correct it a certain amount of times before feeling like a complete boob.

Then my brother got with the game and added an umlaut when he left home. Genius! I wish my family would have done that ages ago. When you read Krüg, you just know it isn't drug with a K. It is Kroooog. In all it's German glory. It's so freaking German in fact, you want to say it with an accent while consuming a beer.

Then I became a Swisher. And I was in phonetic heaven, because certainly one can't mispronounce it. WRONG. So very, very wrong. Almost anyone who reads our name for the first time says:

SHHHwisher or SHHwiSSSer or SwiSSSSSer

What the heck people?!?

It is how it is written.

Swisher.

I don't how the people with alphabet-soup names do it. Or the children who have parents that decide to use all their creativity in the spelling of their names. It must be a lifetime of correcting and feeling boob-ish.

And that my friends, is the kinda of deep thoughts that I have. :)