Pronouncing the names of players correctly is a challenge for any game announcer, especially with the recent influx of international competitors.
The extra vowels of the Finnish alphabet and the glottal stops in Polynesian surnames have always given the veteran announcer the most trouble. “It’s one thing to pronounce a name in your living room, but another entirely while in the heat of a play with thousands of fans clinging on your every word.”
Calvert’s biggest gaffe came during an exhibition basketball game between UNLV and the Chinese National Team during Jerry Tarkanian’s tenure. He meticulously studied the Chinese roster, breaking each name down into phonetics as he always does, but needed a little extra help. So he enlisted the aid of team managers and several foreign languages professors.
“The game went off without a hitch as I nailed each name with the crispness of a native. And when the game was over, members of the team even complemented me on my performance. They said, ‘Dick, you did a great job, except for one little thing: you transposed the players’ names throughout the entire game,’” he recalls, explaining that in China surnames precede given names.
