Many will know the unique angst of being called by the wrong name; whether it’s wrong pronunciation or someone else’s name entirely. Most of the pain doesn’t come from the jarring feeling of being called something else, it’s the awkwardness of whether or not to correct them.
Correcting someone embarrasses them and makes the situation uncomfortable, but if you don’t correct them you risk being called the wrong name again and again.
Someone who understands this is Chrissy Teigen – whose name we’ve all be pronouncing as Tee-gen, when it is in fact pronounced Tie-gen (like a bow tie). Awkward.
On Sunday night Teigen tweeted; ‘Gave up a long time ago. last name is tie-gen not tee-gen,’ when a Twitter user pointed out we’d all been saying her name wrong.
She reiterated it on the red carpet at last night’s Emmy Awards, telling E! ‘It’s Tie-gen,’ and saying she was inspired by Ariana Grande (who recently revealed all its Grand-ee not Gran-day by the way.)
But, she’s so polite she won’t be correcting anyone if they do say it wrong. She said of Ariana Grande’s revelation; ‘That’s way bigger.Mine is the least of anyone’s worries.’
‘Tie-gen is the official, real Norwegian name’ husband John Legend added, with Teigen saying she’s fine with Tee-gen.
Germans will have been saying her name correctly this whole time, of course, applying the rule that you pronounce the second vowel when ‘i’ and ‘e’ come together – as in Bieber, biergarten and zeitgeist.