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Comment by curtis | Hacker News Reader

It seems likely that I am not the only person who can't spell Chuck Palahniuk's last name.

Edit: Now that I think about it, it might be more accurate to say that nobody can spell Chuck Palahniuk's last name...

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Most people can't even pronounce it. I'm guessing the spelling is more natural if you speak Ukrainian.

In Ukrainian - yes, but not in English.

Is this one of those cases where the wage slave at Ellis Island did a craptastic job of transliterating the name and they've been stuck with it ever since?

It's a case of the Latin transliteration not having a "natural"/intuitive pronunciation in English and hence a made-up pronunciation being used.[0]

I think that the transliteration itself was "correct" (assuming that the original Ukrainian was Палагнюк).

[0] https://chuckpalahniuk.net/author/frequently-asked-questions...

It's easier to just pick a varient which works in your new language. I've changed the pronunciation of my name because they Dutch have know idea how to pronounce it. They can't spell it either, however the phonetic spelling is close enough so I just let it slide. It's not worth getting precious when your name is unique enough.

Where did the "g" (г) go, Palagniuk seems closer (or Palagnyuk may be better?).

I know a little Russian, perhaps this is different in Ukrainian?

The Ukrainian г is pronounced as something intermediate between English hard "g" and "h" (ɦ in IPA)[0][1], so it's often transliterated as h.[2]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_alphabet#Letter_name...

[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ɦ

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Ukrainian#Tabl...

There are no such cases. Everyone in the US is free to change their name if they're unhappy with it.

It's one of the few I would have gotten first try, but they didn't include it in my test. I was still surprised how far off I was on the rest, though. Minaj was the only easy one.

Weirdly, his was the only one I got correct.

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