Rebecca Makkai: Hello. My name is Rebecca Makkai. It's pretty easy to say, it's just hard to guess how you'd say it. The spelling is M as in Mary, A-K-K-A-I. It's a Hungarian name and in Hungarian it's basically pronounced Makkai, although I just butchered it. It comes from the Hungarian word "Makk," which means acorn, and there was this town called Makk, and I guess it means person from the town of Acornville. But it gets butchered all kinds of ways. Mackey, Makay, my favorite of all time was Makacky by a telemarketer.

If you want to remember how to pronounce it, it rhymes with Hawaii, but only if you say Hawaii the regular kind of lazy way, not the fancy Hawaii way, which people have tried to do with my name as well.