There have been many over the course of my life to comment on my surname. I have had people mock it, and praise it. In elementary school my parents had the unfortunate penchant to dress me in sweat pants and sweat shirts, which was basically inviting ridicule. Maybe they were trying to teach me an important life lesson, or maybe they were oblivious. Either way, I wasn't big on sweats until college and I rediscovered the joy of elastic waistbands. When I was young, I was also examined rigorously by my peers to determine whether or not I sweated more than was socially permissible. Needless to say I was a big proponent of antiperspirant, even before the free miniature Old Spice that was divied out in 5th grade maturation class.
Later on, people would intentionally mispronounce it in order to avoid offending me if they were wrong. They mostly say "sweet" rather than sweat, which is amusing but gets old. It is a good screen for tele-marketers though, so I guess there is balance in all things.
Finally, during my mission the "SW" together gave the Latins fits with pronunciation. There aren't any words in Spanish that feature the W anyway and so my name-tag caused general stammering and uncomfortableness. Basically, for all you Spanish speakers out there, the pronunciation works best (Su-et).
Despite all of the issues my surname has caused throughout the years, I am proud of it. There aren't a whole lot of us, and I am glad of that. It originates in England, and we even have a sweet (or Sweat) coat of arms. Check it out here:
http://www.4crests.com/sweat-coat-of-arms.html
So, I'm a Sweat. Wanna fight about it?
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2 comments:
I certainly know how people can intentionally mispronounce one's last name.
Fact: Belgians can say my last name better than the French.
Brazilians came up with all kinds of crappy variations. It is kind of a bummer that I am a girl and had to leave the last name behind because I thought it was awesome, too.
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