how strange your name sound like

zhao   Mon Sep 12, 2005 11:47 am GMT
i read a sentence like this:"Sue Wojcicki at Google says the work should be completed in a matter of years."

here ,i don't know how to pronunce the "Wojcicki" and i want to know where this people might come from,according to her strange name?
Uriel   Mon Sep 12, 2005 6:35 pm GMT
It's probably Polish, but I'd guess it's been anglicized to something like "Wo-jicky". It's hard to tell what will happen to a name when it gets moved to new surroundings, though.
Travis   Mon Sep 12, 2005 7:52 pm GMT
At least here in the US, it is not usual at all for people to know how to really pronounce many surnames (effectively all ones but ones from Great Britain and Ireland and *some* German names), and at that, it's not usual at all for people to not know how their *own* surnames orignally were pronounced at all (or to still use anglicized pronunciations even when they do know better).
Brennus   Mon Sep 12, 2005 9:40 pm GMT
In American English the name would probably be pronounced woy-sick-ee byt in Polish it would be voy-tsits-kee. W has a v sound and c a ts sound.
american nic   Mon Sep 12, 2005 9:52 pm GMT
I'm from a town with a relatively large Polish population, so I have to deal with hard-to-pronounce Polish names on a daily basis, and I'd guess it's pronounced Wo-chicki. But that depends on how anglicized they've made their name, and it's probably wrong.
Kirk   Mon Sep 12, 2005 10:04 pm GMT
Yeah, historically the US has had a lot of Eastern European immigrants, and sometimes their last names were Anglicized, but other times they kept their original last names and then adopted an Anglicized pronunciation to varying degrees. For instance, in junior high and high school I knew a girl whose last name was "Brncick" (not sure of its origin, I believe it might be Czech), which she pronounced "brenzick" ["br\EnzIk].
Kirk   Mon Sep 12, 2005 10:20 pm GMT
While I was living in Argentina last year I also came across some Eastern European last names there, as Argentina experienced significant Eastern European immigration in the early 1900s and on. One of my Argentine friend's last names was "Wlasiuk" which is Polish. He pronounced it [blasjuk]. I remember seeing a movie there and the soundtrack composer's name was Ivan Wyszogrod, which i believe is also Polish in origin. I guess he pronounces it [bisogrod] in Spanish but I'm not sure. Some prominent Argentines with Eastern European heritage include Pedro Sevcec, a TV journalist, the composer Mario Davidovsky, and the volleyball players Marcos Milinković (Argentine of Croatian descent) and Alejandro Spajić (Argentine of Yugoslavian descent).
Frances   Mon Sep 12, 2005 11:49 pm GMT
Kirk - it happens here too, revised pronunciations of Slavic names.
Uriel   Tue Sep 13, 2005 3:18 am GMT
You don't even have to be Slavic -- my last name's probably unrecognizable in its homeland now.
zhao   Wed Sep 14, 2005 2:18 am GMT
so the j sound in polish is pronunced like the i sound in english ,am i right?
Lazar   Wed Sep 14, 2005 2:33 am GMT
<<so the j sound in polish is pronunced like the i sound in english ,am i right?>>

Yes - or more accurately an English y-glide. The name "Wojcicki" would be pronounced (roughly) as "Voytsitski".
Goran Dimitrovski   Fri Sep 16, 2005 7:04 pm GMT
Hey, I have a question for people from English-speaking countries, if you saw my name, how would you pronounce it?
Frances   Fri Sep 16, 2005 9:24 pm GMT
Like how it is spelt but with stress not on the first syllable, :)
american nic   Fri Sep 16, 2005 11:11 pm GMT
I would pronounce it goh-RAN dee-muh-TRAV-ski.
Tiffany   Sat Sep 17, 2005 5:47 am GMT
gor-RAN di-mee-TROV-skee