To Miss The Sound Of One’s Name

The short “a” sound in “Maggie” is does not exist in Moldova. The sounds “eh” and “aa” and “ee” do, but not short “a”. So the name “Maggie” is not pronounced the same. I am most often called “Meggie” or “MaGee”, and occasionally “May-gee”. And sometimes when they say my name quickly, it’s more of a “Muggie”. When Moldovans look at my name and try to pronounce it phonetically (by the Romanian alphabet), it would be said as “meg-gee-eh”. But never “Maggie”.

When I was meeting new people in Baimaclia this weekend, so many people couldn’t pronounce or understand my name. I eventually just gave up and introduced myself as “Magdalena”.