Travis Etienne won a national championship with Clemson following the 2018 college football season.<\/p>\n
He was named the Atlantic Coast Conference player of the year in 2018 and 2019.<\/p>\n
He was a consensus All-American in 2020, the same year he became the ACC\u2019s all-time leading rusher.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
And all this time we\u2019ve been pronouncing his last name incorrectly.<\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
When he went to college, Etienne quickly discovered that his last name isn\u2019t so easy to pronounce \u2014 and he quickly grew tired of telling people the correct way to do it. So he adapted. <\/p>\n
\u201cGrowing up, it [was pronounced] Travis \u2018Achane.\u2019 So, it\u2019s like, A-C-H-A-N-E. And that\u2019s how you always said Travis \u2018Achane,\u2019\u201d Etienne told reporters<\/a> Friday during his introductory news conference with the Saints. \u201cBut when I went to college, I kept telling them my name, like, every day, every day, every day. <\/p>\n \u201cAfter like four weeks, they just couldn\u2019t get it. So I\u2019m like, \u2018Man, it\u2019s [pronounced] ee-tee-en \u2014 how you see it is how you say it.\u2019 And it kind of just took off because it was easier for announcers to say it. I didn\u2019t have to correct them every day [on how] to say my name. … It just kind of stuck and made sense.\u201d<\/p>\n Etienne isn\u2019t the only athlete whose name we\u2019ve gotten wrong over the years. U.S. figure skater and Olympic gold medalist Alysa Liu <\/a> recently revealed<\/a> that the correct pronunciation of her name is \u201cuh-LEE-suh LEE-oh\u201d. During coverage of the Milan-Cortina Games last month, Liu\u2019s first name was often mispronounced as \u201cuh-LISS-uh\u201d and her last name as either \u201cLOO\u201d or \u201cLEE-ooh.\u201d<\/p>\n