The Adventures of Earl and Scut

Apparently people here in the Philippines have a lot of trouble with my name. Now I am no stranger to people having some difficulty in the United States with my name but in a very different way. Though when I was born this was certainly not the case, but as I have gotten older, my surname has gradually become quite a popular first name as well. As a result many people have transposed my first and last name on many official forms, emails, or simply calling me by my last name because they assume that is my given name. (This perhaps is part of the reason why it is a pet peeve of mine to be referred to by my surname.) The worst case of this perhaps was with my current employer who switched the order of my name on my HR Personnel File, which meant that everything having to do with my file said (Last Name First Name). So basically they made up a whole new person with a name similar to mine but not quite right. The error with my name even found its way into my pay checks. (Yeah that was an interesting one.) Fortunately no one ever questioned me on this and I still received my bi-monthly checks with no hassles.

But with the Philippines, both my first and last names are not very common, so I notice that several people here have trouble pronouncing my name. Whenever I go to a restaurant or bar they often ask my name in order to put it on the receipt. On one recent trip to Dairy Queen, my friend Eric and I both ordered delicious blizzards (mine had chocolate brownies), and gave our names to the cashier who, as trained, promptly gave us the receipts. Upon looking at the receipts we discovered that the cashier had changed our names to Earl and Scut. For Eric this was a new experience, for me, this was nothing new. I have seen anything from Scoot, Scot, Suck (Yes, there is actually video of kids trying to pronounce my name and repeatedly calling my Suck), Sot, Skot, and my favorite SKat. Eek! I will let my friends at urban dictionary describe the last one. I find that spelling the name out for people does little good as well. Just telling them the letters has little value what-so-ever. Here they actually have an armyesque system for spelling out names. Something along the lines of Alpha, Boy, Cat, Dog, etc. etc for the entire alphabet. But everyone seems to know the correct term for each letter to facilitate the spelling of names and places. I stupidly thinking that you could use almost any word as long as it begins with the desired letter one would want to convey, have often throw out random words like Sand Copper Orange Tarantula Tarantula and have received blank confused stares as a response. Thus, I generally acquiesce and let them spell my name any way they choose. Perhaps I need to come up with some nickname that is a little more Filipino or simply easier to say such as Pascual or Ruperto.