For most people living in their motherland, introducing themselves is a simple matter. Jennifer. Susan. Bob. No reason to pause, repeat, explain. Unless, of course, your name is Moon Unit or you’re a boy named Sue. For the latter, and for me, introductions are seldom simple. My name is (hereabouts, at least) difficult to comprehend in person, and apparently impossible to get over the phone. “Um. Did you say Sunflower?”

It’s not an easy name. It’s a French name. And French, although beautiful, is complex. That’s what happens when a language is created by committee. We can thank the Academie Française for the ‘ç’ that defies all rational spelling rules, sounding like an ‘s’ next to an o, just because it sports a squiggly tail. (And which tail I’ve had to digitally drop as it confuses computers even more than humans.)

In 1635, these scholars got together to establish The Rules of French. Thus, it is these men and their obfuscatory idealism that I blame for going even further and following my mutant ‘ç’ with an o and an i, and yet insisting the sound created is not ‘koy’ or even ‘soy’ but ‘swah.’ (And don’t even get me started on the codependent ‘s’ that only has an existential purpose when activated by an ‘e.’)

When I’m feeling especially irritated by the linguistic folly of my Francestors, I consider writing them a letter of complaint about my last name, as well, which not only contains a silent ‘x’ but three vowels (i-e-u) crammed together in a tongue-twister/ménage à trois. (There’s that ‘wah’ sound again.) 

Here in the U S of A, we like our names rational, literal, and pronounceable, which is why I am often addressed as Fran-ko-ee-seh. I figure that’s my American Indian name. (That, or She Who Constantly Explains Her Name.)

I really can’t blame these mispronouncers. As a child, I misspelled my own last name, omitting the gratuitous “e.” Not out of stupidity or carelessness, I think, but out of an innocent rationality: Surely one of these vowels can go. Who needs three in a row? 

By high school, I could both spell and resent my name. My denominative rancor was abetted by the ritual public humiliation of The First Day of Class (except French, where Madame Dubois, at least, rocked it). In every other class, by the time roll call hit the ‘L’s,’ I was slinking down in my seat, teeth clenched. 

I could tell by the pause after Lawson or Leandro that I was next. “Uh,” the teacher would begin, buying time. Then a came few botched attempts, as she/he struggled with this odd conglomeration of normally compliant consonants and vowels: “Frank—” “No, um. Franz—?” And then the final, mumbled, headlong rush to just get it over with and move on to simpler things, like Maria Lopez. “Francisco Lemininux?”

At which point, I (nearly under my desk), would raise my hand and croak feebly, “It’s, um, Françoise Lemieux.” At which point, every single, solitary person in the class would turn around to look. (I always sat in the back.) So, this cringing, red-faced thing is a Franswa Lemyoo?

In a the throes of hormonal hell and my full-blown snotty-teenage phase, I was not always kind to the puzzled guys at the arcade who, upon being told my name, almost always drawled: “Izzat your real name?” My response depended on my mood and the cuteness of the querent. My favorite: “No. It’s my stage name.”

So maybe I was a little sarcastic. Mostly, though, I had grown weary of my name—repeating it, explaining it, and wincing as it was habitually and horrendously misunderstood and mispronounced. (Forget about all the misspellings…) 

Even after people basically got it, I still had work to do, because they invariably defaulted to Fran-swah. “No, It’s Franswa-ZZZ. ZZZ!” I’d buzz, like a demented bee. “‘Fran-swa’ is a man’s name,” I’d have to explain, followed with one of my generally misunderstood quips: “Yes, I’m plural,” or “I contain multitudes.” (Whitman really got ‘em in the arcade.)

This may also explain my instant affinity with Anita, finicky-name soul sister, whose arcade refrain was “Tah, Tah, Tah! Ani-Tah! Do you see a D in there?” Long name story short, all the other girls were well into “So, what do you do for fun?” and there Anita and I were, still stuck on question one.

I suppose I have to take some responsibility.

It could be said that this is partly my doing, in having stubbornly forbidden the simplest, most logical diminutive: Fran. Despite the obstacle course that is my name, Fran has never been an option. That syllable from nasal hell makes me cringe—probably a little linguistic PTSD from to my algebra teacher’s constant high-pitched refrain: “Fraayyaaannn, can you solve this equation for us?” The memory still brings on a cold sweat (and might explain my lifelong issues with math).

Little did I know that once I began using computers for assignments, spellcheck would insist on calling me something far worse: Franchise Lemming. (Yes. Utterly depressing to contemplate, in all its implications).

Still, my name became easier to carry at university—in part because I met more folks who had taken French or who would at least make an effort, and in part because I finally had a nickname to make things easier. 

The (blessed) nickname, itself, comes with its own set of questions and raised eyebrows:

Çoise (phonetic pronunciation: ‘swaz’) Yes, it’s a strange little handle. An although it’s simply the second half of my first name, it, too, requires a bit of explication, so I’ve drafted these far less snarky instructions: 

First, say my name out loud (phonetic anglified pronunciation: “fran-swahz,” as in: France was a beautiful country, before the war). Then, imagine you’re a quietly creative nineteen-year-old high-school dropout named Phil (phonetic pronunciation: ‘fill’). An amateur mechanic who worships the cherry-red 1972 Chevy Nova that sleeps on your parent’s lawn (in between noisy screeching rumbling midnight outings), living down the street from a wiry, skittish, teenage me.

Next, pretend you want to figure out a monosyllabic moniker for that far-too-skinny adolescent girl who spider hunts with the neighborhood boys, drinks coke out of the bottle in a way that only you can see as sexy, and wanders down the hill barefoot in the asphalt twilight to watch you working shirtless on your car. (Wondering, herself, why the beads of sweat trickling down your naked back seem suddenly not at all gross.)

Only you know that Fran, and any derivative thereof, are strictly forbidden under penalty of death (or worse). So maybe you stay up late one Saturday drinking Coors Silver Bullets, getting slowly drunk on your oil-stained lawn in the Albuquerque moonlight, and you suddenly come up with a nickname for that strange, hopelessly thin sixteen-year-old girl up the winding street.

And she wears it gratefully for the rest of her life.

Little did you know that you—the genius visionary that saw the latent potential in that weird little syllable, that understood that it could be (oddly, perhaps, but truly and fully) up to the nickname task—would change her life, gifting her a sense of individual identity that her full name never did.

After several decades, I’ve made peace with my name, or at least resigned myself to it. I even occasionally think it sounds nice, when pronounced by a Francophone. But I have not been very loyal to it.

I briefly considered changing my name permanently to Francesca, which I often use when traveling (especially in Italy) and in group settings—because people get it in one go, and I actually like the sound of it (especially in Italy—Francesca is a cheerful exhortation in Italy.) When I moved to Mexico, I quickly became Franca once I realized I was never going to get my Z sound there. (One has to pick one’s name battles.) My designated syllables transform completely depending on the pronouncer’s accent: fluid, even melodic in French, twangy and awkward but bearable in English, it becomes an exponentially uglier hard phonetic slap in Spanish.

Despite all the trouble it’s caused, I’ve decided to keep the name. Not out of laziness, masochism, or even familiarity, but out of a certain backwards logic. I’ve kept my onerous first name because of my nickname.

Çoise was a little gift. Not only was custom made for me, but it actually feels like me. Officially, I’m Françoise. In Mexico, I’m Franca. In Italy, Francesca. But in my heart, I’m Çoise.

Fraswaz Lemyoo is a writer living in Portland, Oregon, which is very near Canada, so some people can actually pronounce her name!