Most of my readers know me, and they know how to pronounce and spell my last name. It’s Lopinot. Pronounced like LOW-PUH-KNOW, with the emphasis on the “low.” Well, it gets butchered all the time. Sometimes we even get weird pronunciations with letters that are juxtaposed or not even in the name. Here are a few common mistakes:

LOP-UH-KNOT
LOP-UH-KNIT
LOW-PINTO
LOW-PIN-YO (they get the silent “T” correct but throw a Spanish tilda over the “N”)

And trying to get people to spell this right? Yeesh. That’s partly why I changed my UMSL e-mail address, when I worked there, to justin@umsl.edu. Much easier to give that out to reporters than to go through the rigmarole over my last name.

So anyway, the point of this whole blog post is to tell you about a funny conversation I had on the phone yesterday. I was leaving a message for somebody, gave my first name and then was asked for my last name. Here’s how the next couple of minutes went:

ME: It’s Lopinot, L-O-P-I-N …
HER: O?
ME: What?
HER: O?
ME: No. It’s Lopinot, L-O …
HER: O?
ME: No. It’s Lopinot, L-O-P …
HER: I’m sorry. O-P?
ME: No. L, as in Larry. O-P-I-N-O-T.
HER: L-O what?
ME: [slowly] L-O-P-I-N-O-T
HER: L-O-P-I-N … what?
ME: L-O-P-I-N-O …
HER: O?
ME: Yes, O.
HER: O.
ME: T.
HER: P?
ME: No. T, as in Tom. L-O-P-I-N-O-T.
HER: Huh?
ME: It looks like LOP-UH-KNOT
HER: Oh! I got it now.