Andreas Deutsch

Well, my name is Andreas Krause. That is really a household name in Germany, in particular the last name. In Dortmund, where I used to study, there were four people of name Andreas Krause in the phone book (in roughly 600,000 people in Dortmund or maybe 200,000 in the phone book). In particular Berlin has literally dozens of pages of Krauses in the phone book.

When I moved to Switzerland, I became the only Andreas Krause in the entire Swiss phone book. Swiss people tend to spell it wrong because it's an unusual name. They replace it by something more common to them like Krauer or a mixture of both, Krauser.

For the native English speaker, a typical telephone dialogue goes like this. Say I call the IT hotline.

Me: Hi. I have an odd problem with my computer.
Hotline guy: What's your name?
Me: I spell it to you: K - R - A - U - S - E.
Hotline guy: Crows.
Me: Right. Sort of.
Hotline guy: What can I do for you, Mr. Crows?
And so on.

As saying my name is a kind of obstacle to the English tongue, spelling it is even more difficult. Surprisingly though that includes transcribing it from one form (like an ID) to another. Here are the most prominent examples:


My personal cheques, issued by the Fleet Bank in East Hanover.

My personal cheques close up. Transcribed from my passport that even has the column names in English.


Fleet Bank attempt number 2. Close enough...

... but now try to say that!


Sport Dick's writes his valued customers.

The valued customer close up.


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