Pronouncing “Colin”

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name’s Colin, and I’m from Indianapolis, Indiana.

Hi, Colin.

What’s up?

Hey, I’ve got a fairly personal question for you today.

Oh, we don’t talk about that on the air.

Oh, well, it’s personal to everyone out there whose name is Colin, because it’s about my name.

Oh, about your name Colin. Okay.

Mm—

Do tell.

And that’s Colin with one L, which is also very important, as I think most Colins would attest to.

For my entire life, I’ve grown up hearing my name pronounced colon, like with an O.

But I have never in my life ever met someone whose name is Colin.

And the only Colin I know of is Colin Powell, which personally is not someone I want to really be that associated with.

But I’ve met tons of Collins in my life, and if there’s one thing Collins like to do, they like to, I don’t know, they enjoy meeting other Collins, and they always have to ask, are you a Colin with one L or a Colin with two Ls?

I’m a Colin with one, and I’ve always wondered why it is they call me Colin sometimes.

And it finally kind of came to the point where I was like, I need to know the answer to this, when I graduated from college a few months ago.

And the person reading the names of each graduate pronounced my first name wrong and then went on to pronounce the other three Colins graduating in my class.

All Colin also.

Oh, no.

It’s your college graduation.

My college graduation.

So you’ve got a little problem here, Colin.

Can I ask how old you are?

If you just graduated college in your 20s.

I’m 23.

23.

All right.

So your problem, the way I see it, is that your entire life, the number one COLIN in the country has been a public figure.

Colin Powell has been a public figure since the 1980s when he became the national security advisor.

And then he moved into higher positions and became even more of a national figure as we had various wars.

And he was interviewed on a zillion TV shows and spoke before Congress and so forth.

And he spells his name the same way.

He spells his name the same way.

So that’s one part of the problem, maybe even the larger part.

The other part of the problem is we kind of learn intuitively that when a word has a double L, it’s probably not going to be a long vowel before the double L, like a double consonant.

So if you have consonant vowel, consonant vowel, that first vowel is probably going to be long.

And I think this is part of what’s happening with your name.

People, you know, are just saying, okay, logically most words of this consonant vowel, consonant construction, that vowel would be long.

And so they’re doing a long vowel.

So that’s another part of it, a smaller part.

Another part of it is there are obviously all the jokes about C-O-L-O-N, both the part of your body and the punctuation mark.

And those two colons are far more common than your name, too.

And so you’re outnumbered nine ways to Sunday.

I got it.

And you’re basically fighting an uphill battle.

Yeah.

Yeah, it’s too bad.

Punctuation, body parts, and famous figures.

Yeah, you’re just not going to win this, man.

Here’s something that you should know. In 1991, William Sapphire, he knew a lot of politicians, and he wrote about this very question. He got a letter from somebody who has your name who had the same kind of anger at the mispronunciation.

He actually talked to people whose names are C-O-L-I-N, who pronounced them colon, and said, what up with that, only in his William Sapphire way.

And he has this really fantastic quote in this newspaper column that he made out of those interviews where Colin Powell is talking to Colin Kelly and saying, oh, you’ve been mispronouncing your name your whole life, too, just like me.

And so Colin Powell was very aware or is very aware that his first name is not pronounced by him the way most Collins pronounce their name.

Right. Like in Ireland.

He knows.

Right. It’s Irish, right?

So he’s aware of the damage he’s doing to you and all the other Collins.

Maybe Colin Firth can help out.

There we go.

So that’s the Colin you want.

Colin Firth should just become more famous and swing the tide the other way for you.

He should be appointed national security advisor.

Maybe that would help.

Colin, what’s your middle name?

It’s Ingram, which was actually also mispronounced.

Oh, really?

Yeah, it was pronounced Ingram.

I don’t know why they would mispronounce that, but yeah, I-N-G-R-A-M.

At the same college graduation ceremony, they mispronounced your first and middle name?

Oh, yes. Yep.

Oh, gosh.

Are you sure you graduated? Maybe it doesn’t count.

Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, no one named Colin Ingram graduated, so.

Whoa. Did they get your last name right, at least?

No, they didn’t even get that one right.

No, no, come on. Are you serious?

No, I’m not even joking.

And that is a much more common one for people to mispronounce.

It’s U-L-I-N, which is spelled U-L-I-N.

And it’s often mispronounced U-L-I-N or U-L-I-N.

Oh, no.

Man.

You’re just not winning the name game.

Not winning the name game.

Oh, my gosh.

He’s going to call us next week having changed his name to John Allen Smith and just solve it all.

You had a hat trick there or a mortarboard trick.

My gosh.

Well, you sound like you have a great sense of humor about it.

Oh, yeah.

I’m just so used to it.

And I think I have a feeling a lot of Collins are.

I bet we’ll hear from a lot of Collins.

Don’t you bet, Grant?

Yeah, definitely.

And we invite it.

And a lot of Ulan’s and a lot of Ingram’s.

This is the new Todd Scott.

We’ll get a lot of calls for a long time.

Yes.

Thank you for taking this space to vent your angst at this.

All right?

Absolutely.

All right.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

I would be interested to hear from Collins in their 50s and 60s who maybe didn’t, or 70s, who maybe weren’t called Colin.

Yeah, who weren’t called Colin until Colin Powell came along, maybe?

Yeah, that’s my theory.

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