HE to Last Flag Flying and The Last Detail author Darryl Ponicsan: “How do you pronounce your last name anyway? I’ve been asking myself this for over four decades. Is it like moccasin? Is it PONNICKsahn? Is it POHN-nih-son?” Ponicsan to HE: “I sometimes regret not changing it. No one can spell it or pronounce it. It’s pronounced PAWN-ah-son. It’s Hungarian and has an accent, which I adopted a few years ago after having met a Ponicsán family in Budapest. Anyone with that name is related to me.” HE to Ponicsan: “Forget the accent mark. Pronouncing it correctly is difficult enough. How the hell the Hungarians decided on PAWN-ah-son is beyond me. It should obviously be pronounced POHN-nih-son.”
