Jorge

On how (almost) no one can pronounce properly my name.

During a very long time I was under the illusion that my name was very simple to learn and memorize. In Spanish, apart from being very common, Jorge is a short, easy-to-remember name. (In fact, it is perhaps too short.) It is easy to pronounce too. It turns out that this is not the case for, apparently, a significant amount of people in the world.

In my experience my name is very difficult to pronounce for French-, Italian-, Danish- and Portuguese-speaking people. With some effort, they can be "trained" and get a very good pronunciation. At the beginning they have awkward "thinking" pauses before saying anything, but with some practice the weird 'J' and 'G' sounds are assimilated.

I am particularly amused with the approximations Italian people have for my name. They all are some degenerated form of the Italian version, Giorgio. So, I have heard 'Orghe', and 'Iorghe' and many people call me that way. At the very beginning the persistent mispronunciation thing was awkard to me, and I attempted to correct others all the time. Soon I realized that trying to do so makes little sense, and then I started to appreciate the name approximations: I am well aware that one does not learn a completely new sound from one day to another; my failed experience learning French taught me that very well. In any case, it is no fair (nor easy) to try to train every single person; I am more than happy that close friends do know how to say it properly. French speaking people have similar difficulties, and their attempts are usually close to the French version, Georges.

Even if for Italian- and French-speaking people I was kind of prepared for funny name approximations, I have to admit I expected a different outcome from Danish- and Portuguese-speaking people. I thought this would not be a problem for them. As for Danes, I guess I expected that sounds in my name were included in the large set of weird things Danish language comes with (perhaps in the form of some unusual consonant). That was not the case, and while in Denmark I heard quite interesting approximations (the Danish version for Jorge is Jørgen). A similar hope I had for Portuguese: I guess I expected that the sounds of my name were included in the many features Spanish and Portuguese share. That was not the case either, and although the Portuguese version is written as in Spanish, the pronunciation resembles that of the English: George.

So my problem reduces to find effective ways of teaching others how to pronounce my name. I have failed here as well. I though it was easy by using the following clue for English speaking people: pronounce 'Jo' as the 'Ho' in "Hospital" and "Horse" and 'Ge' as in "Hey". Even if there are funnier ways to approach the problem (see this and this from PhD comics), the above key is not helpful for French and Italian people, as they do not have the 'aspired' sound that is required. They say, for instance, 'Ospital' instead of 'Hospital' and 'peraps' instead of 'perhaps.'

So, the best thing I have found for learning how to pronounce my name is the following audio clip. That's me pronouncing my name:



I am afraid that learning how to pronounce my name is not that useful. In fact, even if the name is very popular, there are not too many famous Jorges in the world. The most prominent one is Jorge L. Borges, Argentinian writer. There are also: Jorge Amado (Brasilian writer), Jorge Valdano (Argentinian, former football player and coach), Jorge Lorenzo (Spanish motorcycle racer). My favorite of all, is, without a doubt, Jorge M. Perez, a billionaire, real estate developer in the US.