I grew up a perpetually poor speller. Considering my career path, I am ironically very bad at it. English doesn’t make it very easy though. In Kindergarten they teach you to spell according to how you hear words. But how on Earth are you supposed to hear all the letters in “definitely” or sound out where the “i” and “e” go in “chief.” Yeah, yeah, “I before E except after C,” although it’s only true most of the time and there’re still exceptions to that.
The point is, I get how hard it can be to write without spelling mistakes. No matter how many times I proofread my writing or run it through spelling programs, inevitably there are always still errors. The thing about growing up a bad speller though, is you grow used to assuming everything is spelled wrong. It’s an assumption that trains you to patiently correct mistakes, double check even when you think you’re right, and always pay closer attention. This isn’t to say good spellers don’t have to do this. I’m sure all people do, but it is in my experience that generally when you don’t have to pay extra attention, you typically don’t.
This can be limiting. Sure, they may know to put the “a” before the “u” in “restaurant,” but I bet they hear my name and spell it wrong the first time.
I am Giana. Let’s sound it out, gi-AH-nuh. Great! Spell it with me now, G-I-A-N-A. This sounds a lot like my Kindergarten lesson about listening for the sounds, but stay with me.
My name is one of those combinations of letters people just cannot get right on the first try. It is not that it is a difficult word (you can hear almost all the sounds), but that people generally aren’t paying enough attention to it.
It’s one “n” and two “a”s, but something about lacking a double “n” throws everyone off.
“It is more common with two,” I’m told. Which may be true, but it isn’t an excuse when it’s the second, third, fourth, twenty first time you’re spelling it.
Often the single “n” leads people to eliminate even more letters, turning me into gi-NAH, someone I used to live with. Others can’t remember the one “n,” doubling it, and turning me into gi-ANNA, someone I don’t know. These misspellings lead to the mispronunciations. I have even been called John-UH, at my high school graduation by the headmaster of my school. I am certainly not her.
So what’s the big deal? Plenty of people have names that are misspelled and mispronounced, right? But that doesn’t make it okay. We should all pay a little more attention sometimes.
When you grow up with cards addressed to some other kid, checks made out to a different person, co-workers calling you someone else’s name, and publications run by individuals claiming to be detail-oriented missing a letter or adding too many (even Word notes its indifference with a red squiggle), it starts to feel like no one can be bothered to pay attention to who you are. After all, our names are who we are, and I have grown protective of mine.
The true irony is that my parents worked painstakingly to find a good, Italian name, spelled distinctly, that would not yield unfortunate nicknames or mispronunciations. I suppose no plan is every perfect.
I have been called any number of things from the “Gigi” my cousins dubbed me with when I was little — fitting as the youngest of them all — to the very original “G” people decide upon their own timeline, without my consent, to call me, from the “Johnny” only my father has ever referred to me as, to the utterly disastrous “Geen” (pronounced Jean but I wanted to retain my “G”) my friends called me throughout middle school. It was a tragedy of epic proportions, one of those “bad nicknames” my parents tried to avoid.
The truth is, I don’t mind what people decide to call me when it has to do with my name. I even retain a certain level of fondness for those who call me “G” well before it might seem appropriate. There is a sense of intimacy in reducing Giana to a single letter, not just for convince, but to underscore the relationship between us as knowing one another — a level of comfort. It seems contradictory to my point about wanting my name known, but it really isn’t. In boiling me down to just a letter, there is still a level of attention paid to that strong first syllable, more so than when people get it wrong.
I understand people making mistakes. My own spelling is proof enough that I get we are never perfect the first time around. What I can’t stand is the consistency of it. I know I can’t spell well, so I make a conscious effort to be better. When Giana is spelled out in an email right in front of you, it seems like simple laziness to get it wrong again and again. It feels like I am less important because my name is something people forget to pay attention to.
“I’m Giana,” is the phrase I use when introducing myself because for me it feels true. It is my name, but in being my name I have come to be who that person is. I am not “Gianna,” though I am sure she is great, or “Gina” my old roommate, or any other variation I have gotten over the years.
I am Giana, one “n” and two “a” s, and I pay attention to that.
Amazing I love it