I was paying by check for something at Loehmann’s back in the 1980s. The sales clerk looked at my check and said, with undisguised horror, “Who would name their daughter Sophia Lucy Dembling?”

I muttered something about my parents and finished the transaction as quickly as I could.

Idiot.

My name, Sophia (the more common pronunciation) is the top girls’ name for 2007. I have mixed feelings about this, since it’s been fun having an unusual name.

When I was a little girl, the only other Sophies I knew were friends of my grandmother. Now the nation is crawling with Sophies. Not so many Sew-fi-ahs, though, which is the more Anglo, as opposed to Italian, pronunciation. And yes, I know of two other Sophias in the world who pronounce it as I do.

For the record for the eight millionth time, I did not take on the pronunciation as an affectation. It is my name, as my parents drilled into me through my childhood.

I think of all this after reading this Steve Blow column, spun off a book called Bad Baby Names about kooky names people have. (I do not think my name is the least big kooky, by the way. I like my name. I even like Lucy, which I hated as a child.) I mean kooky like Emma Roid. Her parents should be fined.

Farther down on the same page, I read this very sad story about the funeral of a toddler who was in the line of fire in a drive-by shooting.

It’s a terrible story and all too common, but laying that aside for the moment, note that the child’s name was Knyledge Sutton. Pronounced knowledge. (His mother is Shaterica, his sister is Jurnee.)

Had his life not been horrifically cut short, Knyledge, like me, would have gone through his whole life explaining to people how to pronounce his name and that he didn’t make it up, it’s not an affectation, it’s really the name his mother gave him. (Even so, I can’t figure out how Knyledge turns into knowledge.)

Name pronunciations are tricky things and those of us with tricky names often have to decide at what point, if ever, we will correct people’s pronunciations. I have a friend named Mimi who, after we had known each other a few years, finally pointed out to me that her name is pronounced Mih-mee, not mee-mee. And a friend named Tara who let me know that it’s Tah-rah, not Ta-ra. Therese is Tah-rez, not Teh-reese.

The trick to doing this is to wait for an easy in, and say cheerfully, "Actually, it's pronounced ------." How long one takes to do this depends on how often the person says your name out loud. Sometimes I don't tell people until they hear it on my voice mail or or hear someone else say it.

My friend Lara has claimed I am incapable of pronouncing her name properly but I still can’t hear the nuance she tries to explain to me. Then again, I am frequently mocked for the way I pronounce the name Karen and I can’t figure out what I’m doing there, either.

Sometimes, when I call tech support or whatever, I take the easy way out and pronounce my name the more usual way, just to make it easy on everyone. But it’s funny how, even though the spelling is the same, the name doesn’t feel like mine as it comes out of my mouth.

My friends mostly call me Sophie, which is easy on everyone, although some use Sophia, which I enjoy. I love the name. Still, I'm a little self-conscious every time someone uses it in public because someone else invariably asks about the pronunciation. And every time I’m asked, I feel compelled to explain that it is not an affectation. And I hear that saleswoman in the back of my mind saying, “Who would name their daughter that?”

Labels: baby names, memoir, words