By Cary Briel / Skaneateles Design
I secretly admire people who have a simple name (read, normal). I wish I had a simple name, such as Joe, or Tim. Steve, John, Hank, Bill… anything simple! Or, just anything that wouldn’t need to be spelled out. It’s not only the first name that’s the problem. C-A-R-Y B-R-I-E-L. C-A-R-Y B-R-I-E-L. C-A-R-Y B-R-I-E-L. AHHHHHH… !!! Do you feel sorry for me yet? I didn’t think so. Lately with all the angry earth stuff going on in the world (devastating storms, tornadoes, earthquakes, and wildfires), as well as economic issues here in the US (rising oil prices, high foreclosure rates, declining US dollar, ongoing war), my needing to spell out my name when asked doesn’t seem to be a hugely important issue. But, then, there’s those times when I am asked for both name and address. For example, when I need to place an order for some totally unnecessary mail order item over the phone. Then it’s the full, C-A-R-Y B-R-I-E-L, 1570 Coon Hill Road, S-K-A-N-E-A-T-E-L-E-S, New York. If you live in Skaneateles, you know the drill well. It doesn’t matter if your name is Joe Smith, you’re still spelling out Skaneateles to every non-local. You may also notice that whenever Skaneateles is in print, you will often see a pronunciation key (such as, skan-ee-AT’-les), so that people outside of the area don’t suffer a brain implosion trying to pronounce the word. Today I found a pronunciation key on Newsday.com, but not in a good way. The article was detailing the William Milham sentence, a story apparently sensational enough to find its way to AP syndication. Read the article here, despite the unappealing promotion of Skaneateles, including a pronunciation key, to be sure that people will pronounce our town name correctly when talking about the issue.
For some time now, we at Skaneateles Suites have been writing Blog articles about the mouthful of the Place we Live.
They are light heartedly called: “So What’s in a Name?”.
Feel free to log in and add some of your own tongue-twisting variations of the Iroquois Indian word for Long Beautiful Lake; Skaneateles, NY.
http://www.skaneatelessuites.com/category/so-whats-in-a-name-skaneateles/
Curt and the Suite Dreams Team
It’s true. I believe that Curt and Toni have absolutely every alternate (mis)spelling for Skaneateles on their website, in their “So What’s in a Name?” series!
Hi Chris, Curt here.
Looks like Cary should add a ’spell checker’ to function. Or at least allow author to review and edit before posting live.
The upshot is it’s especially embarrassing to have typos in an article about mis-spellings! Ha!
Hi Curt, Chris here.
I’m Cary’s spell checker and unfortunately he published this one before I looked it over - just kidding
Now you’ve peaked my interest - I have spelling OCD - what word are we talking about here?
Hi Curt, I’ll look into spell checker. One note: You should be able to re-edit a story and/or comment after posting, if you posted the story or comment when logged in to Skaneateles Talk. So, be sure to log in to your account at Skan Talk before posting a story or comment. Then, after posting, look for the “Edit” link. Let me know if you don’t see an “Edit” link next to one of *your* stories or *your* comments, when you are logged in. This only applies to *your* submissions.