Travis Etienne won a national championship with Clemson following the 2018 college football season.
He was named the ACC player of the year in 2018 and 2019.
He was a consensus All-American in 2020, the same year he became the ACC’s all-time leading rusher.
He has rushed for more than 1,000 yards in three of his four NFL seasons, all of which have been spent with the Jacksonsville Jaguars.
And all this time we’ve been pronouncing his last name incorrectly.
After signing a four-year, $52-million contract with the New Orleans Saints this week, Etienne will be playing his home games about 170 miles from Jennings, La., where he grew up and attended high school.
When he went to college, Etienne quickly discovered that his last name isn’t so easy to pronounce — and he quickly grew tired of telling people the correct way to do it. So he adapted.
“Growing up, it [was pronounced] Travis ‘Achane.’ So, it’s like, A-C-H-A-N-E. And that’s how you always said Travis ‘Achane,’” Etienne told reporters Friday during his introductory press conference with the Saints. “But when I went to college, I kept telling them my name, like, every day, every day, every day.
“After like four weeks, they just couldn’t get it. So I’m like, ‘Man, it’s [pronounced] ee-tee-en — how you see it is how you say it.’ And it kind of just took off because it was easier for announcers to say it. I didn’t have to correct them every day [on how] to say my name. … It just kind of stuck and made sense.”
Etienne isn’t the only athlete whose name we’ve gotten wrong over the years. U.S. figure skater and Olympic gold medalist Alysa Liu recently revealed that the correct pronunciation of her name is “uh-LEE-suh LEE-oh”. During coverage of the Milan-Cortina Games last month, Liu’s first name was often mispronounced as “uh-LISS-uh” and her last name as either “LOO” or “LEE-ooh.”
Several years ago, NFL star brothers Jason and Travis Kelce said that everyone pronounces their name incorrectly — but it’s OK because they do too.
“My dad, at some point when he was working in the steel mills in Cleveland, Ohio, got tired of correcting everybody who was calling him ‘Kel-see,’” Jason told SportsRadio 94WIP in Philadelphia. “Apparently, the correct pronunciation, the standard pronunciation is ‘Kelss.’ That’s what the rest of the family goes by. So, my dad, out of pure laziness completely changed his last name.”
Now that he is based in his home state again, Etienne said it seems like a good time to go back to his roots as far as the pronunciation of his name is concerned.
“I’m very much open to being Travis ‘Achane’ again, just being myself,” Etienne said. “I don’t have to correct people here on how to say my name each and every day. And I kind of love that.”
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