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Background

I have a name that English L1 speakers find hard to pronounce.* One of the first questions I get whenever introducing myself to one, is ‘Can I call you […]?’ After years in the university sector I have come to know many people from many different countries, but on no occasion has that question come from English L2 (L3, L4 …) speakers. As an aside, I remember Jeremy Clarkson joking about his own experience in the US, how they insisted on Jim or something similar because his name had ‘too many syllables’ for the Americans.

Nicknames and abbreviated names are of course not unique to English; in my own native tongue I know many who were known exclusively by their nickname our initials. But the insistence on requesting a different name than the one provided, is something I myself have only experienced with English L1 speakers.

Question and subquestion

Why is there (seemingly, alleged, &c) a proclivity for English L1 speakers to request using an abbreviated name over the one given them? Which differences or similarities in this have been found between IE languages? Are there any meaningful differences in this between the major L1 English variants (British, American, Canadian, Australian, Indian?)? Or is this simply a cultural thing, not related to language at all?†‡

Notes

Remarks

* If relevant, I am a white European culturally and linguistically.

† Though it is worthwhile stressing (as mentioned) that at least in my experience, none of the many other nationalities I have met (e.g. Czech, Danish, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Korean, Russian, Slovak) have requested this.

‡ If I by accident insulted someone by asking this question the way I did, I apologise in advance and kindly ask for constructive criticism on how to rephrase the question.

Relevant questions

Canned Man
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  • Maybe your name is just hard for native English speakers to pronounce. I don't think this is a general phenomenon. But as an academic I assume you've done a literature search on this topic? (Note: you should explain jargon in your question.) – Stuart F Oct 28 '23 at 08:06
  • Conversely, when I spent a year in Francophone Switzerland I had to settle for being Katherine rather than my preferred abbreviation because French speakers find the 'ay' sound difficult. – Kate Bunting Oct 28 '23 at 08:43
  • @StuartF I think it is a general phenomenon, not confined to English. Dutch and German have short names (Truus, Hans). It's certainly prevalent in former Yugoslavia (Miro, Zlato, Niko, Mima, Mica, Suzi). For Romance names see https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipocoristico, https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipocor%C3%ADstico, and https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypocoristique -- assigning a native nickname to a foreigner whose name is difficult to pronounce seems an obvious solution to the problem anywhere. Without knowing why Canned Man's name is difficult for English speakers. it's hard to say more. – phoog Oct 28 '23 at 14:04
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    @phoog, nicknames indeed exist in many cultures/languages, but they are usually reserved for use among family members, friends, and long-term colleagues. What the OP has observed is the phenomenon of somebody one has just been introduced to asking for, and apparently regarding it as OK to use, one's nickname right from the beginning of the interaction, even when one has not offered it oneself. – jsw29 Oct 28 '23 at 15:55
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    @jsw29 but former nicknames often become formal names, Hans and Jan being examples. If the use of nicknames in the public sphere has become more common, which I suppose it has, it's probably attributable to varying degrees of change in different cultures more than any linguistic phenomenon. Calling someone "Mike" who has introduced himself as "Michael" has always struck me as a particularly annoying habit of my American compatriots, not a broady English-language phenomenon, but maybe that's because I've never lived in other English-speaking places than the US. – phoog Oct 28 '23 at 16:41
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    The full answer to this likely depends on what exactly your name is and where you are in the English-speaking world. I think this is entirely a cultural thing, not something specific to English as a language. – alphabet Oct 28 '23 at 17:12
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    @alphabet, why do you think that the answer depends on what exactly the OP's name is? The OP is not asking why he gets this reaction to his name, but why native English speakers react in this way to such names. Or do you think that the reaction is somehow unique to his name, and that he is simply mistaken in believing that the bearers of other difficult-to-pronounce names get the same reaction? – jsw29 Oct 28 '23 at 21:54
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    @phoog, yes it can be argued that this is more a cultural than a purely linguistic phenomenon, and the OP anticipates that possibility; if one believes that this is so, one can make it a part of one's answer. On the other hand, it can also be argued that the language and the culture that surrounds its use cannot really be separated when it comes to questions like this. – jsw29 Oct 28 '23 at 22:02
  • @jsw29 If someone's name is very close or obviously etymologically related to a common English name, or if someone's name is particularly hard to pronounce for English speakers, that's likely part of the explanation. – alphabet Oct 28 '23 at 22:19
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    @jsw29 You understand what my question is concerning. How can I make this clearer? I thought it was clear and you understood it, but so many others seem to have misunderstood it. – Canned Man Oct 29 '23 at 12:32
  • Is the problem people have one of simple unfamiliarity, remembering it, its length, pronunciation, spelling, or something else? Does your name contain sounds that English lacks or sound combinations impossible in English like вто́рник (ftórnik) “Tuesday”? Does your name use letters that English doesn't use (like Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson)? Or when written in the Latin alphabet do the letters mean something different in your language than they normally do in English like in Irish or Hungarian? – tchrist Oct 29 '23 at 22:31
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    Even short non-English names can be hard for monoglots to get right, no matter whether they're Irish (Caoimhín, Tadhg, Domhnall, Diarmuid), Dutch (Joost, Gertjan, Johan, Leendert), German (Rüdiger, Joachim,Walter, Pfennig), Spanish (Jesús, Alejandro, Ricardo, Nicolás), Portuguese (Abraão, João, Gilberto, Sonhando), French (Clémence, Guillaume, Thibault, Yves), Greek (Yiannis, Giorgos, Athanasios, Vasilis), Polish (Grzegorz, Miłosz, Przemysław, Zbigniew), Czech (Matyáš, Vojtěch, Ondřej, Štěpán), Russian (Mstislav, Fyodor, Vsevolod, Vyacheslav), or Hungarian (István, Mátyás, György, Fabríciusz). – tchrist Oct 29 '23 at 22:33
  • Jeremy is a very common name, I can't imagine any native English speaker finding it difficult to pronounce. – Barmar Oct 30 '23 at 16:45
  • As others have suggested, I think this is more cultural than linguistic. I think Americans are more likely to do this than Brits. Partly because we tend to be more informal, and also because we have less exposure and tolerance of other cultures. It's common for immigrants to adopt English names when they come to US to avoid the problem (in the days of Ellis Island, it was probably the immigration officer doing this to them). – Barmar Oct 30 '23 at 16:50
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    @tchrist, analogous problems can be found between other languages, and yet, the OP has observed that the native speakers of English react in this way when they encounter such difficulties, while the native speakers of Czech, Danish, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Korean, Russian, Slovak do not. It is that difference that the question is about. – jsw29 Oct 31 '23 at 16:05
  • @tchrist None of the sounds in my name do not exist in English, and the clusters are not particularly unusual, even in my surname. I have a double first name, three syllables, each syllable can exist on its own in English. Their connection is unusual in English, but not non-existent. Those I have gotten closer to (I currently live in Britain) have had no problem in learning it. – Canned Man Nov 05 '23 at 20:15

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