Yawnee.
Yes, he's heard the joke before. Hundreds of times.
"I don't remember the first time I heard someone call me 'Yawnee,' but I can take a joke," says the Greek composer-keyboardist Yanni. "Sometimes I even call myself 'Yawnee.' "
And he even manages to put a positive spin on a cartoon about him that was published in The New Yorker in 1998.
"I like the New Yorker cartoon of a dentist asking a patient in the chair, 'Yanni or Novocaine?' " he admits. "What's wrong with people using my music to get away from pain? If you think about it, it's not a bad thing."
It helps to have a sense of humor, obviously, when you're the butt of more jokes than any musician this side of Michael Bolton or Milli Vanilli.
Not that Yanni doesn't have his share of adoring fans and devotees. He most certainly does.
But the 48-year-old musician also has his detractors, many of whom are equally rabid. And lots of them just happen to be music writers.
"Yanni's music shows a harmonic thinness typical of the musically illiterate," declared the Arizona Republic.
Taking the high road, Yanni refuses to fire back at them. "I've never taken shots at critics, because what is there to respond to? I'll say it now: Critics are always right. Anything they say is correct."
Much of the Yanni backlash comes from the fact that, early in his musical career, his music was tagged with the dreaded "New Age" label. Yanni has always insisted that his music is not New Age, but he lost the battle to convince critics.
"My music was called New Age, a label meant to conjure visions of artists who say 'Ommmmm' a lot," he says, "and use the ambient sounds of tree frogs, crashing waves and waterfalls to enhance meditation.
"That's never been me. It's just not what I do.
"Ironically, I've been criticized by the real New Age people for being way too intense."
Whether the label is accurate or not, Yanni became the poster boy — and the critics' whipping boy — of New Age music. His music has been described as "musical wallpaper" (The New York Times), "a series of textural overlays that reduce substance to sonic veneer" (The Tampa Tribune) and more bluntly, "vaguely hymnal, ethno-classical twaddle" (The Toronto Star).
But Yanni just keeps on keeping on. He's sold more than 20 million albums worldwide, and earned 35 gold and platinum albums throughout his career.
He's back on the road for his first tour since 1998. He recently released "Ethnicity," his first recording that veers away from strictly instrumental pop music to feature lyrics. He made a network television appearance on Sunday evening, playing himself on the new sitcom "My Big Fat Greek Life." And he recently wrote his first book, "Yanni in Words" (Miramax Books, $24.95).
Of course, that means that book reviewers can now join the legions of Yanni-bashing critics, too.