Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Rhymes With Rain
Two score and some years ago, Wayne and Kay decided to merge their names to produce a new one for their No. 2 daughter. Thus was created Kayne.
My wife.
It isn’t a unique name phonetically, as anyone familiar with the biblical story of fratricide knows, nor by spelling, as was made clear when she was choosing an AOL screen name. But it has not been in the top 1,000 names for either sex in the United States during any of the last 100 years, according to Social Security, so it’s rare enough to carry a certain novelty.
Not to mention sexual ambiguity, which helps explain why she sometimes gets mail addressed to “Mr.”
But it has never seemed particularly hard for anyone to figure out how to pronounce, until lately.
This is the fault, of course, of one Kanye West, a Grammy award-winning rapper who enjoys considerably wider name recognition. His name is pronounced KON-yay (and, according to YeahBaby.com, means “honor” or “tribute” in some unspecified African language). Unfortunately, some people can’t seem to appreciate the slight - but significant - difference in spelling. (As a Google search of “Kanye West” will demonstrate.)
And so people who would never be stumped by Jayne or Payne or Layne (which happens to be the name of my wife’s younger sister) are suddenly at a loss as to pronouncing my wife’s name. They get out the “K” sound, but then verbally stumble around (Caen? Kaynee? Kane-yee?) with that implied question mark indicating “Boy, this is a tough one.”
It’s not. It’s Kayne. As in raising. Or candy. Or walking. Or sugar. It just looks a little different.
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