When I think of a good, basic American last name, Krikorian comes to mind.

I didn’t know how to pronounce Krikorian. My first stab at it went something like “Creek-or-e-an.” Man, was I off. It’s actually pronounced “kri-KOR-ee-uhn.” But don’t get any ideas that I have to pronounce it right.

I don’t. This is America, so I can say other people’s names wrong and I don’t have to feel bad about it. Furthermore, no one can make me say Krikorian with the right pronunciation. To compel me to do so would diminish my assimilation into American life, which in this case would mean giving in to all the Armenians who expect us to say their names the correct way.

I’m hip to that since I’ve become so accustomed to America at large saying Latino last names incorrectly. As a kid, I was a huge major league baseball fan, and found it odd that national sports broadcasters couldn’t say simple names like Perez or Cantu right. Then I went to college far from the South Texas motherland, and professors and fellow students in a foreign place like Denton, Tx., would look at my last name, Cavazos, and not want to even venture a guess on how to say it.

I took no great offense, nor did I insist people in Denton, Tx., say my last name correctly, which means I’m Mark Krikorian’s kind of guy. Krikorian runs one of those immigration restrictionist organizations based in D.C., the ones that blame immigrants for everything from voter fraud to global warming to parents naming their kids Willow and Piper.

Krikorian ventured out from his anti-immigrant encampment recently to say no one could make him pronounce Sonia Sotomayor’s last name correctly. To say the last name of President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee correctly - with its Spanish emphasis on the last syllable - is an “unnatural pronounciation” in English, Krikorian said.

Thusly, for anyone to insist upon the “unnatural pronouncation” of such a strange and apparently non-American last name “is something we shouldn’t be giving in to,” said Krikorian, whose own last name originates deep from the heart of what was once the Soviet Union.

“There ought to be limits,” Krikorian said in deferring to people’s own pronounciation of their names. So, if Brittney with two t’s wants to say her name differently from Britney with just one plain `t,’ why she’s out of luck. We’ll just say Brittney or Britney any dang way we please.

The pronounciation of names is part of the American assimilation process, Krikorian informed us, so people who insist we say their last names right, with all of the emphasis on the right syllables, etc., are basically refusing to be assimilated.

So, Judge Soto-may-er, sorry, you’re headed for the highest court in the land, but no way, no how are we saying your last name correctly, or else we would be giving in to the multicultural police. Better to go with the flow of assimilation, just like Mark Creek-or-e-an advises.

Next thing you know we’re pronouncing Armenian names correctly, and we don’t want to do that. It’ll just encourage more immigration.

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