I get bored with Vox after days and days of Questions of the Day that I either can't answer ("What method do you use to prepare your coffee or tea?" - drink neither; "Tell us about your first kiss. Who was it with? How old were you?" - totally don't remember) or could only answer with something deadly boring ("If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live? Why?" - here in the A-T-L 'cause I like it; "What's your method for calculating a tip?" - um, basic math?). Then I go for some time only checking in to catch up on my friends; inevitably when this happens, I miss a QOD upon which I wish to pontificate. So, another belated QOD from me:

How have people mispronounced your name? How is it supposed to sound?
Pre-marriage, no one ever mispronounced my surname, although I sometimes had difficulty in getting people to understand that my surname was actually two names, hyphenated. Which became more maddening as the years went by, because come on, people! It's not that unusual anymore. Post-marriage, my surname is still not mispronounced because "Bowman" is a nice, straightforward, normal name. Bow like a little girl's hair ornament, man like a dude. Alan, who's had the name longer than me, says he's had the occasional "bOW!man" over the years, with the first syllable "pronounced like the 'ow' in OW!", to quote my friend Basil, but it seems to me that if it were pronounced "Bauman(n)", it would be spelled "Bauman(n)".

But my whole entire life, I've never been able to get anyone to understand my first name without a lot of argument. I could understand if it was a name made up almost entirely of vowels, for example the Irish Aoife (pronounced EE-fya, if you're curious) or some Russian name almost devoid of vowels, but it's a pretty standard word: Helly. All the letters are pronounced exactly as one would expect, rhymes with "jelly" and unfortunately "smelly", as I learned during elementary school, which doubtless incited a lifelong pursuit - if not an obsession - with fresh breath (see yesterday's post). *injured sniff* At least Scottish people familiar with Up-Helly-Aa understand me.

The difficulty arises in having an unusual name that's so very, very close to many normal names, at least two of which were highly "in vogue" during the years immediately surrounding my birth. During most of grade school, I had at least 4 Kellies (2 of which were boys) in my class, 2 Hollies and a Shelley. So each and every time I'm introduced to someone, we go through this exchange:

"Hi, I'm Alexis."
"Nice to meet you. I'm Helly."
"Kelly?"
"No, Helly."
"Kelly."
"Helly. With an 'H'."
"Ohhh, Holly."
"No, Helly."
"Hayley?"
"Helly."
"Holly."
"Helly - with an 'e'."
"Hayley?"
"H-E-L-L-Y."
"Oh, Shelly!"
"No, HELLY. Like 'hell' with a 'y'."
"Oh, I get it now! That's pretty. Victor! Hey, Victor. Come here, there's someone I want you to meet! Victor, this is Kelly!"

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!

As an adjunct to this, I wind up looking foolish to many people I meet because once introductions are made, we've gone through such an ordeal learning my name that no one ever forgets it, but next time I see Alexis and Victor, I'm sitting there puzzling about whether her name is Alexis or Alexa or Alexandra, and whether he's Victor or Vincent or Vance. Bah, it doesn't matter. I don't want to talk to them anyway - they smell bad.