My Name

Share a story about your first or last name. My name has given trouble to many of those who are not familiar with it. My last name is Corle. It is pronounced just like "coral", but people struggle with it. Most of all of my teachers from elementary to college have struggled with it. I have heard people pronounce it as "Corely" "Corale" etc. At my middle school awards assembly, my principal pronounced it as "Corely" and everyone who knew me started to laugh. I tend to laugh too because it is usually pronounced incorrectly. When I am at VONS and I use my mom's VONS card, the checker always says thank you and tries to pronounce my last name and they usually mumble it to make it sound like they said it right. Before my high school graduation, I had to go up and tell them how to pronounce it because they looked at my name and had no idea how to pronounce it. The other part of my story is I went through most of my life thinking that my last name came from my father's family. Later in life I found out that my father had a step dad who adopted him and my father took his last name. I found out that my father's real last name was Stevenson. It was quite a shock to me when I found out this information. Our family always wondered where our father's family came from and we could never figure it out with the last name of Corle. So, when we found out it was Stevenson, we were able to get a better understanding of where our father's family came from.