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Try being Indian.

That will redefine this "very, very annoying" issue pretty quickly.
 
Just wanted to say thanks the the people who actually answered my questions. The "Just spell the name like everyone else" jokes weren't really that funny, and just added to the smugness that you experience on boards like this. And obviously, for as "smart" as those people thought they were they couldn't figure out the simple solution that I was looking for.

But to the people who helped, the "phonetic spelling" option was exactly what I was looking for! I was disappointed in Apple for a minute there, thinking that they had overlooked something as simple as this, but then I ate my words when I found out about this feature. I couldn't find the "contacts" app on the mac store, but like someone else said, you can add the "phonetic spelling" of both first and last names from right within the phone!
 
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