Léon

 I grew up in a highly Francophone area in East Beirut. It was customary during that time to teach French to your toddler before any other language. As such, I spoke French before I learned a single Arabic word.

Also, due to my grandfather’s own name change, my parents decided to call me Léon when they registered me and chose my name. This is an old French name, and it is pronounced the way you would in French. Years later I would drop the accent when I wrote emails in English. This is not because I preferred the English pronunciation of the name but rather to make my life easier when I use the qwerty keyboard as well as not to have my English-speaking reader struggle when reading my name.

But the name that my parents call me by to this day, or the name I used to introduce myself to my wife when we first met, remains Léon. And it is still pronounced the way you would in French.

If you’re an Anglophone, or we are speaking in English I would be perfectly fine with you calling me Leon and pronouncing it the way it is pronounced in English. I would also appreciate the effort if you tried a closer pronunciation such as the Spanish one: León. My grandfather changed his name to León from Assad which is the word for Lion in Arabic. He lived most of his life in Latin America.

But please if you speak French don’t call me Leon especially while we are talking in French and even worse don’t go with the horribly sounding “Lon”.

Je suis grand de taille mais certainement pas Lon 😉

If you are ever in a situation where you come across a person whose name you don’t know how to pronounce, remember Dale Carnegie’s timeless wisdom: “A person's name is to him or her the sweetest and most important sound in any language”. And hence it is worth your while to make the effort and at least ask how to pronounce their name.

Léon