Yolanda Vega bows out
Shiho Fukada/Associated Press
The challenge in this story is how to convey the name. Not how to spell it. How to convey it, because you can’t hear it here.
“Yooooolannnda Vega” was how hola.com rendered it. The Times-Union of Albany opted for more A’s and fewer N’s: “Yooooolaaaanda Vega.” People magazine online capitalized it: “I’m YOLAAANDA VEGAAAA.” The New York Times tried a phonetic pronunciation in 1999 and stuck with it this week: “I’m Yo-LAHNNN-da Vega!”
You won’t hear it on lottery drawings anymore. The New York Lottery announced that Vega, 66, had retired after spending almost half her life announcing numbers and presenting outsize ceremonial checks to stunned winners of games like Mega Millions and Powerball.
[Goodbye ‘Yo-LAHNNN-da-Vega!’ A New York Lottery Queen Retires]
Vega said she began exaggerating the pronunciation of her name almost as soon as she first appeared on television for the lottery. Then, on a day when she was particularly “hopped up on some espresso,” a director complained that “stretching your name is sucking up seconds of valuable time.”
“I said, ‘I’m proud of who I am,’” she said, “and I continued to be true to myself and I continued to do it.”
Inevitably, fans tried to pronounce her name the way she did. “If she ever got tired of it,” said Margaret DeFrancisco, the director of the New York Lottery from 1999 to 2004, “it never showed.”
Shiho Fukada/Associated Press
The challenge in this story is how to convey the name. Not how to spell it. How to convey it, because you can’t hear it here.
“Yooooolannnda Vega” was how hola.com rendered it. The Times-Union of Albany opted for more A’s and fewer N’s: “Yooooolaaaanda Vega.” People magazine online capitalized it: “I’m YOLAAANDA VEGAAAA.” The New York Times tried a phonetic pronunciation in 1999 and stuck with it this week: “I’m Yo-LAHNNN-da Vega!”
You won’t hear it on lottery drawings anymore. The New York Lottery announced that Vega, 66, had retired after spending almost half her life announcing numbers and presenting outsize ceremonial checks to stunned winners of games like Mega Millions and Powerball.
[Goodbye ‘Yo-LAHNNN-da-Vega!’ A New York Lottery Queen Retires]
Vega said she began exaggerating the pronunciation of her name almost as soon as she first appeared on television for the lottery. Then, on a day when she was particularly “hopped up on some espresso,” a director complained that “stretching your name is sucking up seconds of valuable time.”
“I said, ‘I’m proud of who I am,’” she said, “and I continued to be true to myself and I continued to do it.”
Inevitably, fans tried to pronounce her name the way she did. “If she ever got tired of it,” said Margaret DeFrancisco, the director of the New York Lottery from 1999 to 2004, “it never showed.”
