Everyone has been saying Mariska Hargitay’s name wrong.
The actress confirmed during her guest appearance on Amy Poehler’s “Good Hang” podcast Tuesday that the correct pronunciation of her first name is “Muh-rish-kuh.”
Hargitay — who is the daughter of late actress Jayne Mansfield — said that the moniker is a nickname for Maria that means “Little Maria.”
“In Hungarian, the ‘ka’ or ‘ke’ at the end of the name is just like a little endearment,” she explained. “So the name is actually ‘Maria’ after my grandmother, both of them, Hungarian and Italian.”
The “Law & Order: SVU” star said that the mispronunciation is something that she “still live[s] with” to this day, from friends, colleagues and even some family members.
“Who was it last night? I had a lunch yesterday for my sister and my cousin was there,” she said, recounting a time where a family member said her name wrong.
“Your own cousin?” host Amy Poehler asked, to which the activist responded, “I’ve known him since 1994 and he kept calling me ‘Muh-ris-kuh.’”
Hargitay said she almost went to correct her cousin, but ultimately decided to just “let it go.”
How to handle the mispronunciation is also something she deals with on the set of her hit NBC show.
She told Poehler that to avoid having to constantly correct everyone on set, she changed her name to “Marishhhhka” on the call sheet.
“I get called ‘Muh-ritz-uh,’ ‘Mar-see-kuh,’ ‘Mar-kis-kuh,’” she shared, noting that her co-stars will sometimes call her by one of the incorrect variations just to tease her a bit.
Hargitay isn’t the only Hollywood star who deals with people mispronouncing her name on a daily basis, however.
Kirsten Dunst recently spoke out about giving up on correcting people who say her first name wrong.
“Everyone messes up my name,” the actress told Town & Country in August, revealing that the correct pronunciation is “Keer-sten.”
“I don’t care,” Dunst continued, noting that she’ll “answer to Kristen [or] Kirsten, which is how you say my name.”
“In England, they don’t really say my name right. On the last set, everyone was saying my name wrong, but there were Swedish people, people from Hungary.”
The “Bring It On” star confessed that at some point, “You just give up.”
