Pat Connaughton is used to his last name being pronounced incorrectly, so much so that he’s long stopped trying correcting people when they butcher his surname. After 22 years worth of failed attempts, the 6-5 guard out of Notre Dame has made his peace with the various interpretations, even those that stretch the boundaries of elementary-level phonetics.
“We’ve heard some bad ones,” said Connaughton. “‘Con-aughting-off-ton’ might be one of the worst. I don’t even know where you get that. There’s a lot of things going on there. Some people don’t even try.”
And while he’ll obviously give you the correct pronunciation if you ask — for the record, it’s “Conn-uh-ton” — he’s just as likely to follow up the preferred enunciation by stating that you can call him whatever you want.