Pondering those web technologies that may change the future of the world wide web.
10/16/2005; 1:30:41 AM
If you let an english computerized narrator pronounce my first name, it sounds like sdzowurd, which is completely wrong. It's not really hard, the “sjoe” part sound just like shoe. The “r” should be a trilling r, but you hardly hear that. If you let the narrator say shoerd it sounds quite right.
Sjoerd is actually a Frisian name (not Dutch), but I have no roots there. My parents just liked the name. A while ago I found its etymology on this dutch site, it means victory guardian. Since then I use the name “Sigward” as nickname when playing games (which would be the Old German form of my name). Today I found names which mean the same and sort of sound the same too in other languages. In English there is Seward which is derived from Siward (from Macbeth). In Norwegian there is Sjurd which is derived from Sigurd, the name of two Norwegian kings.
My last name, you might have guessed, means (and sounds like) fisher (fisherman).