Mispronunciations of my family name, ranked

The way we say it in my family, “Souders” rhymes with “chowders.” But it sure does look like it could be pronounced differently! Here are some of the ways people get my family name wrong, in ascending order of irritation¹:

8. “Sodderz” or “Sawderz”

This is so close to “rhymes with ‘chowders’” that I don’t even notice it and never correct it. Good enough! Gold star! ⭐️

7. “Sooderz”

I blame former Supreme Court Justice David Souter for this one. Everyone heard “Sooder” on the radio and then transferred it to “Souders.” But it has all the correct letters and no extra ones, so I give it a flier.

6. “Sowder,” “Sooder,” “Sodder,” “Sawder” (no terminal “s”)

There is an Ess at the end of our name. It is a plural name. It has symmetry like that. We are Souderses. How did you miss the ess?

5. “Sounders,” “Sonders,” “Sawnders” (surplus “n”)

Where did the fricking “n” come from? This is, to be fair, the most common mispronounciation of the name. There are not a lot of English words where “ow” goes directly into “d” without an “n” in between. So if you’re just reading the front and back of a word, that seems obvious.

My Junior High gym coach called me “Sounders” every day for two years (despite me correcting him every fricking day) until my brother started seventh grade and was actually kind of good at sports and thus worthy of having his (our) name remembered.

4. “Sanders”

Now we’re getting itchy. This is simply not my family name. This is the guy who founded Kentucky Fried Chicken, or the senator from Vermont, or any one of a zillion other moderately famous people whose name I do not share.

3. “Sounder,” “Sonder,” “Sawnder”

Oh for fuck’s sake. You dropped one letter and added another? Sheesh.

2. “Sander”

No one has ever called me this but it will be funny when it happens.

1. “Ziegler”

When I was 12, I had a paper route customer who habitually wrote “Paul Ziegler” on their subscription checks, every month. My name was on the fricking collection envelope, how could you mess this up? The bank still cashed those checks (they saw a lot of mispellings of my name, obvsly!), so no blood/no foul.

¹ I am omitting, of course, transliterations of the name into other languages (e.g. サウダス), and earnest mispronounciations due to speech impediments, native language accents, etc.