Sar-ve-what?

Growing up with a name like Sarvenaz was...interesting. My classmates were baffled, substitute teachers feared me and, mostly, I just wanted to disappear into my chair and change my name to Mary.

I remember complaining to my mom about how hard my name was and asking her if we could change it. She told me no and then said, "Hey, if you ever become famous, you can teach people how to pronounce it. Think about Arnold Schwarzenegger. Do you think his name was easy? But now everyone knows how to say it!"

I'm definitely not famous but I recently did get an opportunity to record the pronunciation of my name for TeachingBooks.net where they have pronunciation guides for all sorts of amazing authors (like Louis Sachar and Libba Bray)!

So, without further ado, if you ever wanted to know how to really say Sarvenaz, here is a very short recording of me pronouncing it: http://www.teachingbooks.net/pronounce.cgi?aid=18201

Oh, and if you were ever curious as to how I got my name, the full story of that is here.