Last night, a few of my friends were over during the second period of the Pens game.
While we were watching the game, my friend Dinesh referred to Afinogenov, only he didn’t pronounce his name correctly, he called him, “a-fi-NOG-i-noff”. The first time he said it I ignored him, thinking that maaaaybe he didn’t know the correct pronunciation. The second time he said it, I shot him a wary glance. The third time he said it, I KNEW he was just trying to get my goat, so I purposefully didn’t react.
And the forth time he said it, I could no longer contain myself and I screeched, “AAAAAAAAAAAHHH!! STOP CALLING HIM A-FI-NOG-I-NOFF!”
My goat = gotten. Dinesh was quite pleased with himself, and rightly so. I’m generally a fairly mellow person, and Dinesh played his cards just right in order to get me to freak out.
Now that I have gotten past my initial bad reaction, I’m beginning to enjoy the sound of “a-fi-NOG-i-noff.” Say it outloud a few times. You might like it too.
Hey Kate! Ready for tonight’s game? Your Sabres scare me, they just beat Boston and then Pittsburgh, that doesn’t look too good for my shaky habs. O’Byrne won’t play tonight though, so I hope for Buffalo that Lindy Ruff didn’t count too much on a late third period own goal in his game plan.
A-fi-NOG-i-noff sounds like a Russian holiday cocktail.
I can kind of related to mispronunciations of Max’s name. One of my uncles kept pronouncing Max’s name as “A-fin-o-jen-ov” instead of A-fin-o-gen-ov during our Thanksgiving hockey discussion. It was getting a bit annoying. But I just poured myself another glass of Baileys and smiled.
In hindsight, this could have easily been dealt with by calling him “Danish.” :)
I get bugged when people call him “Fini” for short.
Back when Afinogenov was nothing/not on the Sabres, I always thought that’s how it was said. Hhahaha.