What would be a good way to tell people a foreign name they don't know? Is a nickname a good opportunity?

Question

A friend of mine is going to travel to Colombia and is afraid that the colombian people might have problems understanding his name. His name is "Henning", it's a german/european name which pretty much doesn't exist in Colombia. When we talked about this issue, we joked about different nicknames for him that he can use to make it easier for people.

So I wondered, should he try to use a nickname for first encounters? He could also tell them that it's a nickname and his real name is Henning. Later he could make his friends get used to his foreign name, but don't make it too difficult from the start :)

What might be good ways to tell people your name which they've a hard time to understand?

Answer 1

I'm not from Colombia, but from Spain. I can share you my experience with foreign people so you can decide. I think your friend should not worry about his name. I've met some people whose name was difficult for us to pronounce, specially some Chinese people. All of them just introduced themselves with their real names. Then many possibilities may arise:

• We can say the name almost properly. No problem them.
• We have difficulties with the name. We can try to pronounce the name as close as we can, we can substitute the name for a similar name in Spanish, or we can just give that person a nickname.

So your friend must not worry about searching for a nickname, we'll give him one. One case I remember, about a Chinese person named something like Hwang or so. We ended calling him Juan, as his real name was pronounced very similar to that Spanish name. From then on, he always introduces himself as Juan.