Just an FYI if you don’t know me offline: my name is pronounced true-lah. True like rhymes with blue, Lah like rhymes with ah. For some reason many people find my name difficult to say. If they see it in print first, they usually will completely ignore the R and say Tula. If I say it first, they will usually repeat it as Truly…I always think, did you not hear what I said??? I don’t mumble or speak unclearly or speak quietly for that matter, so it baffles me how or why so many people seem to hear eeee when I say aaah. True-laah not True-leee. I always feel a bit mean, even though I do it quite nicely, when correcting folks about how to say my name, but it would get on my nerves being called Tula or Truly so I nip it in the bud right off the bat. I don’t let it go to the point where I’m snapping on folks. That said I suppose Truly is understandable as it’s a commonly used word, but who goes around saying Tula? For anything? Oh my goodness the R in my name is not silent.

I do realize it is an unusual name, but the TR part is a pretty specific sound and of consistent usage across many languages, so I don’t understand how anyone coming across the name Trula it would not at least try to pronounce the word with the TR sound. But so many people don’t, they just completely ignore the R. One time I started to ask this lady “Do you say tuck instead of truck? Tip instead of trip? Tavel instead of travel? No? Then why TF would you say Tula instead of Trula?” But I didn’t, I just said ‘the R is not silent, it’s Trula’ and gave her my 6th best smile.