zlacker

>>notok+(OP)
There's an analogous problem for Russians, and presumably folks from other Slavic-language countries. Our last names are gendered; if Ivan Kuznetsov marries Elena, her last name becomes Kuznetsova. (And their children would have gendered last names, too - little Borya Kuznetsov and little Masha Kuznetsova.)

So Russian families who move to America have a choice - either deal with people and systems who assume that married couples, and parents/children all have the same last name and hit roadblocks when that expectation does not match reality, or change one partner's last name to match the other's.

But that second option has problems too, because that name change doesn't retroactively apply in Russia - so now you might have American documents that say you're a Elena Kuznetsov, but your Russian documents say that you're Elena Kuznetsova - so any legal dealings that involve the two countries (like, say, traveling) become significantly more complicated because you need to prove that the two names actually point to the same person.

At least middle names aren't a big issue - patronymics mean something in Russia, but here in America it's just a string you pop into the "middle name" field, and maybe you get asked what it means, and get to teach someone what patronymic means.

>>pavel_+Yb
As a related issue, some Slavic language countries require foreign documents to be transliterated into the Cyrillic alphabet, which doesn't contain exact equivalents for certain English alphabet letters. They usually end up using the closest phonetic equivalent but this often causes bureaucratic hassles.

>>nradov+Ug
Now I'm trying to figure out how one would write out Matthew in Cyrillic, which has two phonemes that are as much of a nightmare for Russian-speakers as "ы" and "р" are for English-speakers. "Мэтью", maybe?

>>pavel_+qi
My given name is Anthony, and I have this problem. I grew up in Australia, and visit some family in Poland every other year. The Australian pronunciation of my name is particularly incompatible with Polish, so I change it from 'ænθəni' to (something like) 'ɑːntɒni'. The 'æ' sound at the start of my name is totally foreign, and if I start introducing myself in Polish, then say my name the way an Australian would, the entire sentence just sounds too weird. Obviously Polish people are familiar with Western culture, and have probably seen the name before, but it just sounds too strange when used in spoken Polish.

>>ajxs+wL
The sound [æ] is not entirely foreign to Polish and some other Slavic languages. It often shows up as an allophone of /a/ when it's between two "soft" (palatalized) consonants (e.g. the first /a/ in the word "niania"). The problem for us learning it is that it's not a separate phoneme, and worse yet, the environment in which it occurs in Slavic languages doesn't correspond to anything in English - and, conversely, in English it appears in environments where it could only be [a] or [ɛ] in Slavic languages.

The name itself is, of course, originally Roman, and it's also the name of many Christian saints, so basically every Christian country (not even necessarily a Western one) will be aware of it and have some version of it; for Polish that's be "Anton", I think, same as in Russian.

>>int_19+GU
This doesn't happen in my speech, I certainly pronounce both <a>'s as [a] in "niania". [ɛ] is different, it certainly becomes [e] after palatalized consonants. I agree that people cannot tell the difference intuitively, though.