For a little while I kinda split the difference. Early in my tech news writing career, I started pronouncing my last name as the French version.

I fenced in high school and we did well enough to go to a national competition, so they brought in fancy refs from France. For the first time in my suburban upbringing I heard an actual French person pronounce my last name over the auditorium speakers and it was the coolest frigign thing I’d ever heard.

So once I started doing interviews and getting on podcasts in the early days of my writing career, I pronounced my last name that way to try and distance myself from my family without going through a legal hullabaloo.

I eventually I realized it was a bit disingenuous since I hadn’t spent the time to learn anything about my French heritage, which I was already quite removed from anyway. I dropped it and went back to what was surely the Ellis Island pronunciation I grew up with.

So the lawsuits are going great, then