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Q: How to you pronounce your name, Daryl Hoole?
Daryl: Good question, since there are a couple of ways to say it. Here's an easy way to remember how my first name is pronounced: Daryl has the “are” sound, rhyming with Carl. I love the sound of my name, yet when people say Daryl with the traditional pronunciation which rhymes with "barrel," I have ended up with a barrel full of problems. Explaining that I am a girl, not a guy, has been an on-going process.
My father was a military officer, and we as his family followed him from city to city during my growing up years. As a result, I had attended eighteen different schools before graduating from high school. You can imagine how many times I had to explain my name and how many times I found myself on the roll for boy's gym. In short, I have been drafted, given double looks, and doubted. Recently as I endorsed a check at the bank, the teller questioned, "Why did you sign your husband's name?" The latest incident was an invitation to join the Sons of the Utah Pioneers. My mother has justified naming me Daryl by insisting that the related confusion has given me character.
If this is what it takes to gain character, I must be doing well because, to make matters worse, my maiden name was Van Dam. Most people are just plain afraid to pronounce it. And now my married name is Hoole which rhymes with cool, but the pronunciation is not obvious, and we've had many humorous misunderstandings. When one of our daughters was born on April Fool's Day, some friends suggested it would be clever to name her April Hoole. We didn't -- she's Elaine. There have to be better ways to build character!
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