I get that my name is hard to pronounce for non-Dutch speakers. I really do.
I’ve found that it works well if I tell English speakers that my name is “Wow!-ter”, they can remember and pronounce my name near perfectly. “Wow!”, by the way was my nickname in the Authentic World Circling Training T3.
!["WOWter"](https://wouter.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Aliases-1-225x300.jpg)
By necessity, I also respond to “Walter”, the common German version of my name (which was amusing when my friend Walter and I went to visit a Japanese customer one time).
!["Walter" (German version of "Wouter")](https://wouter.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Aliases-2-225x300.jpg)
However, coffee butchers barristas do manage to misspell my name in some particularly spectacular ways:
!["Boter" ("butter" in Dutch)](https://wouter.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Aliases-6-1-225x300.jpg)
!["Wouten" ("cops" in Dutch)](https://wouter.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Aliases-4-225x300.jpg)
!["Valta"](https://wouter.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Aliases-5-225x300.jpg)
!["Watere"](https://wouter.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Aliases-3-225x300.jpg)
And it is not just them. Some graphic designers, who were provided with a spelling out my name and the wish to have a logo for “Wouter.org”, from an account named “Wouter.org” on 99Designs, still manage to translate that an ‘elegant’ “Wolter.org”.
![Wolter.org](https://wouter.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Logos-2-4-300x300.jpg)