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The Search For My Uncommon Last Name, Part I

If you grew up with an uncommon, oddly spelled or hard to pronounce last name, you're in good company.  With a name like "Tscherne" you can probably imagine all the ways people have attempted to pronounce it and all the incorrect spellings people came up with. My siblings and I would typically have to have pity on the poor person trying to figure out how to make sounds consistent with a last name with 6 consonants and 2 vowels, one of those vowels only finally coming into the mix after 4 consonants.  I can't tell you how many times we all went through hearing things like "Next up is (first name) T...Tch...Tich....Ch....Sh...Tuh...Tech..." and us finally just standing up so the person could catch a break from having to settle on some collection of sounds that never resembled how we actually pronounced it (which is "Tish-ern"). I was always curious about our name and where our ancestors came from. The only people I'd ever heard of with our na...