I've complained about people misspelling and mispronouncing my name in the past.

But, that was nothing compared to the endeavors of people trying to pronounce my last name.

Having a Filipino surname has admittingly been an issue for me growing up in North America.

Heck, even I've misspelled my own name sometimes.

Now a lot of you are probably thinking,

[scoff] Filipino names aren't difficult, how dare you underestimate me? That's probably because the only Filipinos

You've met are the ones with Spanish surnames like, Santos or Cruz or Mendoza.

But I got a legit ass Filipino last name. *Panganibān*

I'm not gonna accept, so don't even bother

Anyway, I wear it proudly now, but as a kid I couldn't help

but feel embarrassed that people had trouble pronouncing my last name.

I was the immigrant. I didn't stop to think, "Man, these people are stupid because they can't read my foreign name."

I just accepted that I was different.

Whenever it was a new school year or, we had a substitute teacher

and they had to do roll call,

I'd always try to cut them off once they'd said my first name, to save them the trouble of struggling with my last name.

And I was always the only Dominic in my class so, it was an easy snipe.

Alana Nicholson

"Here!"

Brian Owen? "Present."

Dominic, "Here!" Puh-puh, "I'm here, I'm here."

[puhs continue in background] "Here! Look over here, you stupid-" [takes deep breath]

"Present!" Banana? How do you pronounce that?

Pen-Kanda-Ben?

"Uh, Yeah that's it. You nailed it!". No, really, how do you pronounce it?

Can you just start class please?

I mean, I tried my best to teach it to those who were genuinely interested,

And I get that you want to be respectful but,

I wasn't offended if you said it wrong, and over time I found it to be troublesome

and eventually just told them that any way was acceptable.

Except that one time the judge for my speeding ticket called me Punjah-Bob.

Punjah-Bob...

Freaking judge should have been a butcher. I envy some of you people with your low syllable count last names. Koreans

I'm looking at you with your Kims and Parks and Lees and others of you have surnames that work as first names like

Davis or Rose or Robert

[voice crack] How did that happen? And then you have us people who live with tongue twisters as last names,

I mean have you seen Thai names?

"Cod-Codessa-Die-Ira"

"Nar-Kirdru-Kano"

Porn, pi-, porn?

Goddamn! One hotly debated thing for me as a kid was how to pronounce all of my Vietnamese friends named Nguyen

And to this day, I'm still not sure if I'm saying it right. It's not Nagooyen or Newgen or chicken McNuggets

We all know that and it's not simply "when" like some people have simplified it to be."Say when!"

Actually, it's pronounced mu-in. All I know is it's got to come from your uvula,

You know that punching bag thing at the back of your mouth?

Moin

Apparently, that's the southern Vietnamese way, and the northern way is mu-in but I'm not an expert and that's my best attempt,

I am sorry, my Vietnamese audience. I think my favorite last name is this

Because it's so deceiving

It's literally two letters and doesn't even have a frickin vowel! How the heck do you pronounce that? It's not nug.

Most people say Aang but apparently that's wrong. I asked my friend, and she said it's pronounced. Are you ready for this?

mmm

mmm?

MMM??

Where's the M? It should be pronounced NGUH mMMM, it's for when I eat that good cassava cake you know?

MMM!

Yeah, that's good. You know what was always a challenge? When my friends came over and didn't know how to address my parents.

Because when you're a kid, you don't call your friend's parents by their first name. It's it's kind of rude

You gotta say mister, or missus, whatever your friend's last name is. "What a beautiful home you have Mrs.

Kim!" "Thank you for dinner Mr. Wilson." "Don't upload that video Mr. Paul."

But for my friends, it was more like, "Hi Mr. Puh-..puh-

uh- fuck uhhh..

how are you?". And I get it, my parents get it. My last name can be a mouthful and

So here's a tutorial on how to pronounce my last name. All right first off

It's four syllables, okay? Four. So don't go overboard and say 'pannanana batman'

The common rookie mistake is to pronounce the hard G.

Pan-GU-an-a-ban. It's not exactly silent either, so it's not punana ban

You have to continue the 'n' sound like in singER and dongER

Raise it. The a sound is neither long nor short

It's not "paayyng" or "pehng" like when people say Merio, nuh-uh. It's Mario okay

MAH-REE-YO. MAH

Pah Pang Pang-a

Kee-Ban. Like bonsai

So throw in a little Filipino accent flair and you get Panganiban.

There you did it probably

Most likely not I can't hear you and confirm because this is a video

But it's okay because my last name is the least of your worries when you got people with names like this

But yeah, that's how you pronounce my last name, which by the way means dangerous

I'm not even kidding the base word Panganib, means risk or danger and my middle name means foolish

Dominic foolish danger

Has a nice ring to it, so if you don't want to choke trying to correctly pronounce my last name

I guess you can just call me Mr. Punge-Bob

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