What's in a Name?

My names, yes, names, have been spelled so many times that I can't help but laugh.
My first name, Heidi, has been spelled Hiedi, Heide, Hiede and Hidy. When I lived in Minneapolis, that's where it was misspelled the least. Maybe all that Nordic and Germanic stock produced a population that could handle the spelling.
My maiden name (and now my middle) is Galek. It is not Irish, but it sounds like it if you pronounce it the way most people pronounced it, GAY-leck. That's the way we pronounced it, too, though it's Polish in origin (sounds something like Gah-WES-ka) and butchered down to a more Anglo-friendly form. Some would try and pronounce it gah-LECK, and depending on my mood I'd correct it.
The name evolved however, in the course of junk mail. A straightforward five letters became mangled and malformed in so many ways: From Galek to Galeck to Galick to Talek to Taylor. An amazing transformation, from a shrunken Polish surname to classic English.
I should check if a Galek is akin to a tailor, though I doubt it. I think our family were coal miners. Good, hearty Catholics eating cabbage and blood sausage and going to Mass regularly and having lots of kids. No sewing and stitching except to keep an ass from hanging out someone's drawers. At least that's the impression I got from family stories.
When my now-husband Steve proposed to me, I didn't hesitate to take his name. It's a sign of love, of togetherness, and I liked his last name. Bitsoli. It flowed nicely. It sounded soothing in comparison to GAY-lick or GAY-leck. BIT-soh-lee. It sounded like an offering of homemade biscotti. A soothing inflection was there.
But I soon learned that us Bitsolis may have said BIT-soh-lee, but hardly anyone else does.
The best mispronunciation is the mildest: Bis-TOE-lee. It almost sounds like a brand of vodka. Actually it sounds damn close to a brand of vodka I used to drink a lot of in college.
I can't even figure out a spelling for some of the even more mangled versions of the name. Sometimes I just wait for a telemarketer to gnaw off his or her tongue trying to say it. Occasionally they try and murmur the name, Bih-(something unintelligible)-lee. It's kind of funny to listen to them try and fake it. If they earned commissions for laughs they might strike it rich.
Sometimes, when they ask for a Mrs .... (loooong pause) Bit-stall-eye, I just say, nope, no one here with that name.
There always is a silver lining.
Because if you can't pronounce it, I probably am not going to buy it.