Carolina Hurricanes radio announcer Chuck Kaiton has established a reputation for zealously learning and using the correct pronunciation of non-English player names in the National Hockey League.

That typically means going to the source and asking the player how he prefers to hear his name uttered. Therefore, it’s not Sergei SAM-so-nov, it’s sam-SO-nov.

This reminds me of an offhand joke from an ESPN SportsCenter announcer, back when Eric Desjardins was traded from Montreal to Philadelphia in 1995. The quip was that, by moving from a Francophone city to an American one, he went from being “Eric de-zhar-DAN” to “Eric de-JAR-dins”…

Having an unconventionally-spelled name myself was probably a contributing factor for why I gravitated toward NHL fandom, in that it gave me a way to identify/relate with players in that sport. Although the caveat is that I prefer having a name that most people don’t even bother to attempt to pronounce, given the incongruous letter combination, as opposed to a name that looks phonetically “correct” but isn’t.