So I’m sitting in a room at a modified version of Coast Guard Boot camp for prior service/people with college degrees/older than 27 (life experience). I’m prior service just switching branches to do something a bit different. This is the first night.

The Company Commanders (Coast Guard version of Drill Sergeants) are going down a roster to confirm that we are all there. It’s a small group compared to a normal boot camp. Less than 30 of us and we are only there for 3 weeks. There’s a Nguyen in our group. But his name is flip flopped on the roster some how. So they keep calling his first name which is a two name. As they are calling names they get to him and the following exchange occurred at full volume yelling.

Company Commander (CC): “Jones” Jones: “Jones, Aye!” CC: “Doe” Doe: “Doe, Aye” CC: “Jean-Luc” Nguyen: “Nguyen, Aye!” CC: ……”Jean-Luc” Nguyen: “Nguyen, Aye!!” CC: getting red in the face “JEAN-LUC” Nguyen: “NGUYEN, AYE!” CC: “AM I GETTING PUNKED RIGHT NOW? What is your name” Nguyen: “Petty Officer Smith, Seaman Recruit Nguyen, my Surname is Nguyen, my first name is Jean-Luc”

…..Company Commanders do some whispering

CC: “Nguyen” (pronounced Na-gwen” Nguyen: “Nguyen, Aye!!” CC: “wait is it Na-gwen….or Nguyen..? How do you say your name?” Nguyen: getting nervous “Petty Officer Smith, I pronounce my name Nagwen!!” CC: “ok….let’s try this one more time…is it Nguyen?” Nguyen: “Petty Officer Smith, my name is Nguyen!” CC: “THATS WHAT I JUST SAID”

Meanwhile the other company commanders are trying to not die laughing snapping at anyone of us who makes eye contact with them and all of us are shaking in our chairs so confused by what just happened.

It couldn’t have been a more iconic Nguyen/Vietnamese-American pronunciation mixup to start out our boot camp there and I think about it everytime I see some discussion about it.

I felt comfortable using “Nguyen” but have changed all other names. Considering how many Nguyen’s there are in the Coast Guard, it could very literally have been any one of them lol.