Bravo-Luna-Oscar-Golf

PART I
PART II
PART III

My last name is a long one: Yergensen. It’s not only long but there aren’t many Yergensens around. There are far more Yorgensons, Jorgansons, and Jergensens. The mind seems to sometimes reject a name that it hasn’t heard before and substitutes something that it’s familiar with. I’ve experienced this quantum mental leap when giving people my name many times. And there is that whole “son” verses “sen” suffix at the end to further muddy the waters. Once you read it and see it spelled properly, it seems easy, it even flows phonetically but people who are hearing the name for the first time just do not instantly grasp how to spell it.

Is that spelled with a “U” like in “urine”? I swear, I’ve been asked that question.

The other strange phenomena that happens is I will spell my last name for people and when I say “Y” for some odd reason their brain translates that into the word “why” and I get all kinds of items addressed to Shelly Whyergensen.

So, when I needed to give people my email address, I tried using the NATO phonetic alphabet to spell my last name. “Y as in Yankee, E as in Echo, R as in Romeo, G as in Golf, E as in Echo, N as in November, S as in Sierra, E as in Echo, N as in November. Usually by the time I got about halfway through, I got lost and I would drop an Echo or a November. Then I went to work for 3D Conferencing. Conferencing is an easy word to misspell if you aren’t concentrating, haven’t had enough caffeine or are typing too fast. There is an extra “E” in there that isn’t typically pronounced.

So, I would end out phonetically spelling both “Yergensen” and “conferencing” for some people. Most of those people fell asleep some time after the third “November”.

A few years back 3D tossed around the idea of renaming the company “Conferencing Concierge” because it eloquently described what we do for our customers. I had a personal meltdown.

PART I
PART II
PART III