9
Xirate
5y

Non english-native devs - when you work with foreign customers, do they insist on using your name as it is pronounced in your country, or do they prefer to use English substitutes?

I mean - I'm from Poland. We have a call with a guy from France and he goes on and calls everyone as it is in Polish, but sometimes I know it would be easier for him to go for English names (we can translate them easily, no one would be offended, I guess)

Is it the case in your work? :v

Comments
  • 1
    comme on!
    polish names aren't that hard to pronounce for other europeans?
  • 5
    @heyheni Krzysztof, Andrzej, Maciej - try to read those as english-native :v
  • 8
    Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz...
  • 0
    @Xirate krystof, Andrea,
    I have no idea what that last one is 😂

    @zututukulipa my jaw is locked up after that.
  • 3
    We have this issue on Arabic dialects. I worked with someone who have a last name that means in my dialect "asshole"
  • 1
    Ask him once or twice if he would prefer pronouncing it "in French", but if he chooses not too, it's best to let him be.

    (Nice of you to even think about that, though)
  • 1
    I experience even other Danes have trouble with my name. W/e as long as it's somewhat close to what I'm called. I prefer emails anyway so you can't mispronounce shit
  • 1
    @Elyz "E-leez. See easy!" :D
  • 2
    @Jilano Ely = Ellie
  • 2
    @C0D4 The last one Maciej is Mathew and Grzegorz is Gregory

    Back to question.
    I let customer call people like he wants to as long as everyone understands to whom he is speaking.

    Usually “naming convention” is not crucial part of the conversation.
  • 1
    @vane Mathew? Yea not even close to what I was thinking.
    Ah Gregory makes sense but I was trapped in his last name 😂
  • 1
    @C0D4 Honestly, I'm still not convinced he's not just making fun of us.
  • 1
  • 1
    @C0D4 Actually I'm not sure if Mathew is Maciej, we also have Mateusz, which is more accurate for Mathew. We tried to figure out what would be perfect translation for Maciej, but failed to find one :v
    Edit: I took my precious 10 seconds to google it :v Turns out its English version would be Matthias
  • 1
    @Jilano is believe it if he was 😏

    @Xirate there's a name that's not exactly common 😅
  • 0
    @C0D4 It's not too uncommon in France

    @zututukulipa Ha! Thanks
  • 0
    I know a person with last name "kutasi".
  • 0
    @Xirate this is bigger issue for people from Russia/Belarus and even bigger for India and China. The first group use transliterations and it's common that the same person has 2 or more different spellings, Dmitry/Dzmitry. For India i've seen shorter versions of their names. For China - I saw whole new names, let's say you are "xiu ling chiao" written with ideograms and you go by business alias of "adam wong".
  • 0
    @mt3o younger chinese people get their english nick name in school during english class. Usually the teacher just assigns one to the students.
  • 0
    @zututukulipa "okay greg brewski listen up" :D
  • 1
    I always say my original name at the beginning of the interview but then I tell them that they can just call me $englishName
  • 0
    @Frederick it's not my real name, but sort of a bastardized version of a nickname lol.
  • 0
    @horse you'd think more people would know about horses
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