Priti Ubhayakar’s article resonated with me because of my non-English surname (A moment that changed me: for the first time in my life, a stranger pronounced my name correctly, 1 April). I grew up in the 1950s on a very English council estate. Most other kids were a Brown, Smith, Jones, etc, but I was an Uszkurat. My lineage is complex on my dad’s side, with a Lithuanian grandfather whose original name was changed to Uszkurat by, I think, German authorities. My dad was born in a part of Europe that was German until the Treaty of Versailles made it part of the new Poland. Like many other Polish ex-servicemen, my dad became a British citizen after the second world war.
My first day at junior school is memorable for one thing: the teacher insisting that I was spelling my surname incorrectly. Three times I was given a new workbook on which to write my name, and each time I did not use what I knew to be the incorrect spelling being insisted on by my teacher.
