Your name is what?

This is Mal Washington. He was a pretty good tennis player back in the day, even reaching #11 in the world back in the early 90’s. Now he covers tennis for ESPN. He’s done pretty well for himself. Except for one thing that’s been bugging me for about 15 years. Check out his full name: “Malivai.”
Now check out how he pronounces it: Mal—uh—vee—uh
I don’t know what language “Malivai” comes from, but unless it’s one that transposes the sounds of the last two letters of every word, the dude’s been mispronouncing his own name his whole life. Dyslexic mother? Cruel joke? Who knows, but I’m really glad he started going by “Mal.”






P.S., my friend V (who’s also got a blog: http://flipflopsandsocks.blogspot.com/) asked that make sure that everybody knows that this:




is his favorite guitar player, Steve Veeah.