Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/12/31/fallen-officer-honored.html
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This would really annoy me, if it would happen to me (and I would still be in a position to be annoyed) - get killed in a crummy way, and then people mess up pronouncing my name.
That being said, Dee Dee Megadodo does make a good stage name.
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My given name was one of those kind… the ones where you dread it any time some one is going to have to read it out loud like “Oh God please just stop at the first syllable and let me interrupt you…” Eventually it got funny though.
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I had a friend, years ago, whose parents almost named him Peter Abbott.
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This calls to mind the trouble San Francisco’s Fox affiliate KTVU had reporting the investigation into the crash, with fatalities, of an Asiana airliner at SFO:
My personal (and quite possibly wrong) understanding is that the problem started with a cheesy (and racist) joke that was circulated via email. An aviation consultant who had worked for KTVU news in the past forwarded it to his contacts at the station (for them to laugh at the joke), and they thought it was a hot tip. They called the NTSB for confirmation, but got an intern, who immediately grasped what the people he was talking to had not and, summoning superhuman discipline, said without laughing that he could confirm the accuracy of the information. That’s why the newsreader mentions NTSB confirmation. The intern was fired within a day or so. I don’t know his name. He is my hero; I’ve always wanted to start a GoFundMe to buy him beers for the rest of his life.
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I’m not even sure how you get those sounds from those letters.
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Louisville police Detective Deidre “Dee Dee” Mengedoht
Well, they got the nickname right, even if by accident.
Some knew her.
Journalism genius over at the Courier-Journal.
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Seems like a prompter fail.
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oh well. my last name is five letters and two syllables and everything is pronounced, or ought to be pronounced, phonetically. i’ve had students and parents say my name incorrectly in at least 5 different ways, some of which require the addition of letters that aren’t even in it.
i absolutely feel for anyone who has a given name or a family name that is complicated and/or difficult.
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Worse, any live script should have phonetic spelling for any name that’s at all complicated.
My guess is that Officer Mechadoodoo somehow pissed off the TelePrompTer intern at some point.
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That’s some real WASP bullshit. Oh look at this funny foreign name that isn’t English, derp derp I can’t figure out how to pronounce it despite living in a nation of immigrants all my life.
Could I do better while on live TV? If it was my job, I would hope so!
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I first heard about Captain Sum Ting Wong right here: https://boingboing.net/2013/07/12/ktvu-sum-ting-wong-and.html
My take is that she had already started on the last name when her brain realized how wrong she had gotten the first name and it was going back to try and mentally fix the mistake which derailed the last name altogether in a tragically humorous way. She made a megadodo of it alright.
I knew a Richard Hunter.
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My first wife was fed up with people mispronouncing both her names - Siobhan O’Rourke. (“shivawn oh-rork”). Then found out that people can muck up “Cairns” as well (saying Karns, instead of Kerns). It puzzles me how people mess up “Deirdre”, but I am Irish, and am familiar with the Deirdre legend. My daughter’s teachers routinely called her “name” while her class mates correctly called her “Neev” (Niamh). And you would think the next door neighbour would remember that the boy is called Benedict, not Benjamin. People seem to work on autopilot for a lot of the time. It explains such a lot.
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I heard it live on KTVU news in San Francisco. I had a bona fide Smack My Head- moment when I heard Tori Campbell say the list of unreal names and I turned to the TV in time to read the list. And then I thought… woo boy, someone’s going to be in big trouble down at the tv station!
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I went to school with a woman named Diana Sorus.
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Looks like Boing Boing is also having trouble covering the story. The officer’s first name is apparently Deidre, not Deirdre. Muphry’s law in action.
DJ Sara Cox named her son Isaac. He has his father’s surname.
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