I'm from the Middle East. My name is complicated for a lot of people in my office. I've been at my office for almost two years and I'd say about 75% of the people still say my name incorrectly. I've tried gently correcting by repeating the correct pronunciation back to people when they say it wrong, but it doesn't stick. I don't want to give personal info, but for the sake of understanding with a comparable name, let's say my name is Nasim (NAS-eem) and it gets pronounced Nas-IHM. There are no new sounds in it for them, like "kh", and when I introduce myself, I pronounce it as palatable as possible (i.e., not what my parents actually call me in our language).

It really gets to me that people haven't bothered to learn how to actually say my name, when it's not that hard, and feels like daily micro-aggressions. The reason that it gets to me especially is because I get confused with a girl in my office who also has an Arab-sounding name (we could not physically look more different), I get her emails and she gets mine. People who have asked me what my religion is in the past (not Christian) then go on to ask if I had a good Easter, just all kinds of little things like that. I have mentioned offhand to HR that people do tend to say my name wrong (only because she asked what the correct pronunciation is). Would it be passive-aggressive for me to put my name in the email signature? Like: "Nasim (NAS-eem) Lastname"? Or should I just let it go entirely?

Surprised I couldn’t find much discussion about this on the internet, but how do y’all feel about adding name pronunciation onto all email signatures?

For context, I’ve got a foreign name that is seemingly straightforward to pronounce in English, but is actually pronounced differently in my native tongue which I prefer. E.g. name is “jawn” so it looks like it should be “John” but is actually pronounced like “Joan”

I’ve actually found client teams to be very respectful, and they generally ask to clarify pronunciation. If they don’t, I usually kindly correct them. But for folks internally, most senior leaders don’t never bother to ask, and when I do correct them, many don’t remember. The pronunciation is admittedly not intuitive so I generally don’t blame them as they default to standard English pronunciation.

I have never seen anyone include pronunciation in signatures, but I feel like it could be helpful. Thoughts?

I am one of the many blessed with a ridiculous surname that is not pronounced anything like its spelling would hint. It is extremely frustrating to hear my name botched over and over again, but I'm not sure if it would be wise to include something that would help whoever I'm contacting know how to pronounce my name properly. I was thinking something like this-

Sincerely, Ms. Confusinglastname (This-is-how-you-say-it)

or

Libraryhermit Confusinglastname (This-is-how-you-say-it)

Would this be acceptable, or should I not do this? It just gets frustrating explaining this over and over again. Any advice is appreciated.