Hi,
So I have lived in Spain now for almost 10 years and I will be applying for citizenship soon. As part of this process I can pretty much chose my Spanish name. Or I can keep my polish name.
The problem is that my name is very polish, like Grzegorz Filipowski. Every time someone has to write it down and look me up in a database I have to show them my ID. When it happens over the phone I have to spell it. Every time I meet someone they ask me what’s my name is and then repeatedly try to pronounce it while I say ‘yeah… close enough’. It’s pretty annoying and it would be solved by simply changing my name to something Spanish like Gregorio González or something.
What do you think? Would you see it as a practical thing to do or as a stupid intent at impersonating a real Spaniard?
Oh, they will never get used to saying those names because they are just not able to make polish sounds. In polish there’s a lot of weird sounds like ‘szcz’ (shsh) or thinks like ‘prz’, ‘zsz’, ‘dżdż’ that foreigners just can’t reproduce. My name is like that. And even if they learn to kind of almost say it they are never able to write it. People at work always make mistakes when writing my name.