Pronouncing ‘Foreign’ Names Redux

Apropos the Pronouncing ‘Foreign’ Names business, Eugene Volokh reminds us that it’s not just Hispanic surnames that cause problems:

[W]hen you bring an unusual name to a foreign country, you have to expect that people won’t always pronounce it the way you do. But if you want to humor me, please say it in a way that rhymes with “Pollock” (with the accent on the first syllable, of course). It’s not the standard Russian pronunciation, but it’s the one I use myself in English.

I learned my Russian pronunciations from The Original Pavel Chekov and had always internally pronounced Eugene’s last name as if it ended with -wagon.

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• Pronouncing Foreign Names
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