When I studied abroad, I thought my host family just had difficulty pronouncing my name. They didn’t try very hard before deciding that they’d just call me Brahim and be done with it.
This kept happening no matter where I went in Morocco. Even fluent English speakers decided to give me alternative names, and I just shrugged it off as the consequence of one of the syllables being very unusual in Arabic.
That is, until one day I was talking to a shopkeeper in the souk and he asked me my name. I gave him my English one, and explained that I also answer to Brahim (and Daud, and… more than I can remember). He laughed hysterically and looked shocked, calling his friend over from the back of the shop.
“Tell him your name,” he said excitedly. I did so.
The other man’s face cycled through several expressions very quickly—surprise, anger, suspicion, and then exasperation when he realized his friend had set me up.
They very kindly explained to me that my name spoken with a Moroccan accent sounds very much like an Arabic profanity, and that I should definitely introduce myself as Brahim or give an alternative English name when meeting new people, because shaking hands with strangers and saying “Hello, I’m Fuck Your Mother’s Religion” is not a greeting that will win me many friends.
So. Brahim it was.
Another fun story: when I forgot the word for “egg” during dinner and attempted to compliment my host mother’s soft-boiled “Ibn Al-Dajaj”.
Son of the chicken.
When I was working at a Thai restaurant one summer I heard the guys in the kitchen talk/yelling (it’s a kitchen, so… loud) and I thought I heard my name so I stuck my head through the door and asked if they’d called me, and they all stopped and stared for a really long moment and then started laughing like crazy. Turns out my name sounds exactly like the Thai word for garbage.
Language barriers: a source of unlimited hilarity since the evolution of vocal cords.
I had an American friend who worked as a doctor in Saudi Arabia for awhile and apparently one of his coworkers (also American) kept getting referred to as “Dr [surname]” by their coworkers. Everyone else was called by their first name. Turned out his first name essentially meant “fuck you” in Arabic and nobody was comfortable yelling it across a hospital.