Mariska Hargitay sets the record straight.
On the October 21 episode of The Amy Poehler Show. Podcast “Good Party”Hargitay has set a record for correctly pronouncing her name.
Drum roll please: This is Mariska.
She explained that people still make mistakes, including her cousin who recently messed up his pronunciation.
“I've known him since 1994, and he kept calling me 'Mah-ris-ka,'” the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit star said with a laugh.
To avoid further confusion, Hargitay said she changed her name on “Law & Order” call sheets to emphasize the “h” sound. “Now it's Maris-xxxxxxx on the call sheet… just so people can say, 'Okay, I see! She really loves the letters “h,” she laughed.
“But my name is Mar-it-za, Mar-si-ka, Mar-kiss-ka. Chris called me Mar-it-za on set,” she added, referring to her co-star Chris Meloni.
“Just to confuse people,” Poehler joked.
“Oh yeah,” Hargitay replied.
“Marishka” is a Hungarian name meaning “drop of the sea, bitter or beloved”, and is a diminutive of the name Maria. Numberberry.
“In Hungarian, -ka is a term of endearment. So my name is actually Maria, after my grandmother – both Hungarian and Italian,” Hargitay said on Poehler's podcast.
Hargitay isn't the only celebrity whose names we got wrong. In August, Kirsten Dunst told Magazine “City and Country” that her name is usually mispronounced. It turns out that this is actually KIER-sten.
“But then again, who cares. Everything is fine,” she said. “I'll respond to 'CHRIS-ten', 'KIR-sten' or 'KIER-sten' as you pronounce my name, but I don't blame people.”
“In the last set, everyone was pronouncing my name wrong. But there were Swedes and people from Hungary, and you just give up,” the “Krysheknik” star said.
