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Underground > Comic Books >

Comics Creators with Difficult Names

15:28 / 06.09.02

In another thread, McGlinchey came to the embarrassing realization that he'd been spelling Ann Nocenti's surname incorrectly for years. Not picking on Sean: this sort of thing seems to happen a lot in the comics field. I think it's because comics have such a low profile in TV and radio: fans may see the names, but never hear them—and if they read them wrong the first time, they may never be corrected.

Thus there's a curious dyslexia at play. I have known many, many comics fans to speak of John Byrne as "brine." Half the Internet seems to have missed the obvious pun of "Frank Quitely," and insist on thinking it's "quietly." Dave Sim keeps turning into "Sims."

Rather hilariously, at Neil Gaiman's first big American con, I heard dozens of tortured mispronunciations from fanboys unwilling or afraid to say "gay."

And most infamously: S-I-E-N-K-I-E-W-I-C-Z. "Sin-keh-vitch." It's not that hard, folks.

Heard any other amusing fuck-ups?
Are there any names you don't know how to say aloud?

Matthew Fluxington

15:43 / 06.09.02

Yeah, never hearing the names certainly can throw folks off, and it's understandable. Having a surname prone to frequent mispronounciation myself, I'm pretty forgiving of this sort of thing. I think it's fine for folks who maybe aren't used to eastern European languages to mispronounce and mis-spell "Sienkiewicz" - to a lot of English speakers who aren't completely informed, it does phonetically come out to "See-en-ky-ew-ic-iz" or somesuch.

Until just now, I honestly had no idea that Neil Gaiman's surname was pronounced "gay-man" and not "guy-man", I've never heard anyone say the name out loud, and I've never encountered the surname in any other context. I think yr being a bit condescending on that one, Jack...

Thinking on it a bit -

Even though I recently found out that it's not the proper pronounciation, I still find myself saying "Mark Mill-ARE" instead of "Mark Mill-er".

I didn't know that 'Clowes' rhymed with "plows" and not "blows" til the man made the pronounciation clear in one of his comics.

Can anyone tell me the proper way to pronounce Herb Trimpe's surname?

16:04 / 06.09.02

Not really, but when I was young and callow, with a coarse palate and an appreciation for the graphical stylings of Ron Lim, I liked to snarl about Steve Dick-Toe and Bill Stinkewicz. Relatedly, I like it when people say Roar-shark, Mag-neht-o and Rouge (though that doesn't happen much since the X Men got on TV).

16:04 / 06.09.02

Two syllables: TRIM-pee or TRIM-peh. It's German, I believe.

Murray Hamhandler

16:59 / 06.09.02

Thank you, Flux! I have been trying to figure out how to correctly pronounce 'Clowes' for years. I must've missed that issue of Eightball (although I do recall reading something where he threw out several incorrectly pronounced variations of his name w/o actually bothering to fill us in on the right one...). You are a Lifesaver®.

17:05 / 06.09.02

I've always been guilty of fouling up John Rey Nieber's name into John Ney Rieber. Ah Christ. Suddenly I'm staring at his name and now I don't even know which is the right one. Look both up on Google. It seems to happen a lot.

Dyslexia. More fun than a video game, kids.

17:07 / 06.09.02

And Cameron Stewart. How the hell do you pronounce that?

17:34 / 06.09.02

brawd-ah-roe-JAK.

(a wink and a nod to the old-timers.)

17:52 / 06.09.02

Heh.

I have a friend named Kalman Andrasofzky (Ann-dra-SHOFF-tskee) who's done some work in comics, and wants to do more. We were having a discussion about his name recently and how I don't think it's a "marquee" name - in that it's likely to be frequently mispronounced, misspelled, or plain forgetten. One wag on a DC message board - ahem - "hilariously" called him "Mr. Andrasofszkyanovichenheimer."

I suggested he drop the surname entirely and just go by "Kalman," like Cher or Sting. but he thought that was too pretentious.

Oh, and my name is pronounced "Throat-wobbler Mangrove."

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

18:23 / 06.09.02

Trimpe is pronounced the same way as Stimpy. Well, except for the first few letters.

Oh you know what I mean.

STOP STARING AT ME!

Murray Hamhandler

18:30 / 06.09.02

Funny. I do the same thing, Mestitute Dass, and I'm not even dyxlesic

19:21 / 06.09.02

My personal fave: Fab-ee-an Nee-see-ay-za.

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:10 / 07.09.02

Way-ull....given that I suspect Jack's offering on Bill Sinkedistinctlymintywicz is an American reading of a name that would in Poland have a soft "s" and a rise (like an unvoiced "y") on the second vowel sound, perhaps one of the problems is that American comic book writers' names are usually Americanicised, leaving us poor Europeans utterly stumped.

"My office appears to be occupied by a Mr. Medici."

"It's Medicky. That other way sounds too fruity."

Of course, the other possibility is that people involved in comics tend not to be enormously literate, and thus not have a very good eye for words; looking at the recent PDFs of scripts for Stormwatch: Team Achilles on the Interwebnet has been a broadening experience.

20:53 / 07.09.02

The brit just love to mis pronounce john ney reiber's name to make it sound like Johnny ribber bringing making him sound like a brand of ribbed condoms.

07:12 / 08.09.02

Ralph Macchio...

Is that MaCHio or MaKKio?

or KAraTEY KiD?

10:05 / 08.09.02

Carib-BEAN or Ca-RIB-bean?

ONLY NICE THINGS

12:41 / 08.09.02

You say Deodayto, and I say Deodahto...

06:15 / 09.09.02

Those Stormwatch scripts are the current obsessive article among my circle of friends.

In regard to names, another problem that arises with migrants is that depending on how many generations away from Immigrant Zero you are, the more likely it is that the name holders have adopted the incorrect, but easier to get around with English version.

Shi-yen-ki-eh-vitch is close, but still not 100%.

ONLY NICE THINGS

08:02 / 09.09.02

Further assistance here.

09:58 / 09.09.02

Steve Yeowell (sp?)

As in "Yeovil"?

11:18 / 09.09.02

...one of the problems is that American comic book writers' names are usually Americanicised, leaving us poor Europeans utterly stumped.

"...us poor Europeans"?

Haus, while you sit upon your lofty English perch castigating us ignernt colonials for bastardizing your sacred European languages, say this sentence for me: After the ballet, the chauffeur drove us to the café, where we ate from the buffet.

14:58 / 09.09.02

And was there gruyere?

15:47 / 09.09.02

Yes.

And paté.

ONLY NICE THINGS

18:10 / 09.09.02

With a discrete cough, I lower myself from my bough in the great tree that stands outside Loughborough and prepare to get tough...

I'm not entirely sure what the problem is. Merely observing that Bill Sienkisshestilldrinkinginthatstinkingpinkpalazzawicz's pronunciation is further complicated by the fact that somebody could hit the Polish pronunciation perfectly and still get it wrong...