What's in a Name?

I can totally relate to this hilarious comic, just like many others who have foreign names. When I was going through grade school, I used my chinese spelling as my name. While this was great and all, none of my elementary or middle school teachers could pronounce it. So every time they got to my name, they would say almost EXACTLY what the one in the comic said, and I would just say HERE before they could butcher it further.

The worst is when the teachers have absolutely no clue how to pronounce it, but they think they can sound it out because their cousin's neighbor once had a layover in Beijing, and by doing so, granted powers of pinyin to them. Over the years, I have had such great names as: Zang, Ecksziang, EcksZing, and my personal favorite: Song. How the hell do you get Song.....

I think the last straw was at the district science fair where I actually won first prize for my little sprout in magnetic field project. The announcement came almost exactly like this:

"Second place goes to Robert Somethingorother.."
"First place goes to ..... Ecks...Eckszinang....I cannot pronounce this, but you know who you are." So awesome, I shortly changed my name to a simiar sounding romanization and haven't had much problems since.