October 24, 2022: Uncommon Family Name (1), My Daughter, Trouble （珍しい名字（1）、苦労）

I enjoyed the article Sou Hino posted on October 24. It was about the change in the surname. My daughter was happy that her surname changed to a new one at her marriage. It is because my surname has a unique Kanji letter. I have never seen those other than my relatives who have the same surname and the same letter. I have seen those with the same surname but a different Kanji letter on TV. Out of interest, I searched the Internet to find how many people have the same surname and the same letter in Japan. Then, about seventy people have the very same surname as mine. The letter is not difficult to write but not taught at school. Thus, none can read and pronounce it correctly. At my school age, it troubled me whenever a new school year began. My new teachers had always read and pronounced my surname wrong. They should have asked me to tell them how to read it since they had never seen it. They never did it. Instead, they tried to read and pronounced it randomly and repeated the mistake.
In retrospect, they should have consulted it with Japanese language or Kanji dictionaries before they came to my classroom. Their job is to examine and teach things.

10月18日の日野笙さんの記事を興味深く読みました。「名字が変わること」に関する記事です。ボクの娘は結婚して名字が変わり大喜びです。というのも、ボクの名字が珍しいからです。親戚以外で、同音同字の方に会ったことがありません。同音異字の方はテレビで見たことがあります。インターネットで調べてみると、全国に70人くらいはいらっしゃるようです（ボクと親戚も含まれているとおもいます）。字は難しくないのですが、学校で習わない字が含まれているため、誰も正確に読んでくれません。ボクが学校に通っていたころは、苦労しました。新学期で担任が替わると、新任の担当は決まって名前を間違えます。初めから読めないので教えてといってくれればいいのに、適用な読み方で読んで間違えます。今思うと、教師なのだから国語辞典や漢和辞典で生徒の名前くらいは調べて欲しかったです。