Hey Jo!

Is what someone said today. And it took me a moment to realise there was no Jo in the team and that she probably meant me.

I’ve never liked it when people don’t pronounce my name properly. But turns out, saying Johanna is a virtually impossible for Brits and when I first moved to the UK, I was mainly “Dscho-anna” or “Dscho‑hanna”… yikes. Add to that a surname that people regularly butchered (“Dscho-ckiiim”) and my nails still roll up. So, if people can’t say Johanna, I thought, let’s go with Jo.

In five years in the UK, I hardly heard my first name more than a handful of times and pretty much forgotten what it sounded like. South Africa got a bit better, but it wasn’t until I moved to Italy and started working in the UN that I went back to Johanna. The UN folks, I decided, with staff from all over the world with weird and wonderful names, should really be able to say my quite ordinary one.

And they did manage well and I started forgetting that I had ever been Jo. Until today.

Hey Jo! Welcome back!