Name Games

Guess the Gender Name Game:
* Florian
* Heike
* Uwe
* Ute
* Micha

Answers are below. Of course, many names popular Stateside are here as well... but they sure don't sound the same. I asked what a little boy at Eli's school was named and the teacher said "Coll" or maybe "Cawl." What? I asked how it was spelled. C - A - R - L. Aha. The "R" thing... It is not rolled like it is in Spanish. In fact German gives the common"R" two sounds. One pronunciation is guttural - back where your tonsils hang. The other pronunciation, like in the name Carl or the word Butter (yes, butter), is where it is nearly silent. I say nearly because there is a sound there but just thinking about the letter when speaking, rather than attempting to say it, is usually all the pronunciation it needs. Eli, of course, does this perfectly. The most popular names we've run into are Heidi or Katrin/Katerine for women and Torsten or Thomas or Jurgen for men. Other fun ones are Manfred and Wolfgang.

Family Names: Mary is normal, though not common, for Germany, but usually in the form Maria. Eli is completely strange and I pronounce it slowly so people will understand. In the German Bible and translated it would be Elias ('ee-lee-us'). Kevin is normal but not common. But Sandra (pro: 'sondra')? No one my age has my name in the states. Here they are everywhere. Sandra's abound on restaurant name tags and at neighborhood get-togethers. One of the main news anchors is a Sandra. I saw two more on name tags this past week. It's funny, but it actually helps... it's the one thing that's not strange about me when I'm meeting the locals.

Florian = male, pronounced easily like it is spelled
Heike = female, pronounced like the word 'hike' plus 'uh', hike-uh
Uwe = male, pronounced 'oo-vay'
Ute = female, can be spelled Jutta, both pronounced 'yoo-tuh'
Micha = male, pronounced 'mee-shah'

How'd you do? There are some that are even more strange, but I can't even spell them much less pronounce them.