[General] Should I always write the accents in my name?

[Karel1990]

Hello,
I do not know what forum to put this in. I am Czech, studying in Canada, and my surname has the hacek in it. I observe many people that choose to abandon it but I hope that with the accents there are greater chance of being pronounced correct! (LoL)
I write the Czech way on documents and such but I am anxious that it is not proper. Maybe it is the difficulty of producing a hacek with a Canadian computer?

thank you

 

[tedtmc]

Hello,
I do not know what forum to put this in. I am Czech, studying in Canada, and my surname has the hacek in it. I observe many people that choose to abandon it but I hope that with the accents there are greater chance of being pronounced correct! (LoL)
I write the Czech way on documents and such but I am anxious that it is not proper. Maybe it is the difficulty of producing a hacek with a Canadian computer?

thank you

Hi Karel

I am curious to know what 'hacek' is. Care to enlighten us?

 

[Karel1990]

sorry, I mean the little hook over s or c or z, as "Karel Čapek" or čeština
thank you for the reply

 

[Karel1990]

I just worry if it seems more annoying than helpful

 

[bhaisahab]

I just worry if it seems more annoying than helpful

People who are not familiar with Czech, myself included, wouldn't necessarily know how the accents affect the pronunciation.

 

[Tdol]

People might be more aware when they see it written with the diacritics that the pronunciation is different, but most native English speakers will have little or no idea what the pronunciation should be. I don't think it'd be an annoyance, as long as you don't mind if the reply doesn't have them. ;-)

 

[Raymott]

Hello,
I do not know what forum to put this in. I am Czech, studying in Canada, and my surname has the hacek in it. I observe many people that choose to abandon it but I hope that with the accents there are greater chance of being pronounced correct! (LoL)
I write the Czech way on documents and such but I am anxious that it is not proper. Maybe it is the difficulty of producing a hacek with a Canadian computer?

thank you

Yes, it's partly a computer-generated problem. You will find yourself represented in all sorts of ways in databases, and probably have many administrative problems to look forward to.
If I were you, I would consider spelling the name without the foreign accent while in Canada. I don't think this is illegal. After all, Chinese students have to romanise their names for recording purposes in English-speaking countries.

 

[BobK]

Several notable Czech people have names with haceks. I've rarely seen Antonín Dvo?ák - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia without (though I expect Google will prove me wrong - as Raymott said, it's probably a computer-generated problem [exemplified by that link-name). In that case, I don't think anyone in the English-speaking world tries to pronounce Dvořák without some consonant different from an /r/ (although I imagine we don't get it right - we certainly don't get the stress right ;-)).

But technology develops pretty quickly. I once worked with a German called Götz who used the name Goetz as her email address because computers at the time couldn't handle umlauts. For the rest of her professional life she was stuck with 'Goetz'. If that had been me, I'd've regretted the unnecessary obeisance to old technology.

It's certainly not 'rude' to use the appropriate diacritics, and I'd think twice about making concessions for us foreigners!

b

 

[mmasny]

I worked in England for some time and had some meetings with different officers, who wanted to know my name and put it in some documents. I gave it to them with the diacritics (I have the barred "l" in my first name) and they wrote it down without them. I didn't care much about it, so did nothing. But I'm curious what's the legal point of view on that matter. Could I demand writing it properly?