It’s Pronounced Jung, But Not Like Carl

August 25, 2017

When I was at Nerdery HQ for my orientation day, I got to introduce myself to a lot of the leadership there. I made it a point to discuss the pronunciation of my last name, which is Jung – with a hard “J” sound.

Most people tend to see Jung and automatically pronounce it “Young.” Conditioned, no doubt, by the famous psychiatrist Carl Jung.

During our introductions, I made a mention of this – and joked that I wasn’t really Swiss. I tend to make this joke, as it helps clarify the pronunciation and usually gets a few laughs.

Fast forward to today, when I arrived to find an envelope waiting for me at my desk:

I love that someone at HQ sent this to Chicago, completely omitting my first name in the process. I also love that someone in Chicago saw what was going on, and added their own little note to the process.

We’ll gloss over the misspelling, since the first name is pronounced the same… for this joke about how the last name is not pronounced the same.

The last few years has had me trying to differentiate myself from Steve Aoki. I wonder if I’m now entering an era where I need to differentiate myself from Karl. I mean Carl. You get what I’m doing here.

Individuation, FTW.

// Edit: It only occurs to me, much later, that I forgot to mention the actual contents of the envelope. It was access information to a service for hosting conference calls. Most of my communication is done via online methods anymore (think Skype or Slack or HipChat), but it’s nice to have the option should I need it.