Do people willfully screw up your name? They do mine!

I can identify with Elizabeth Becton, although I would never be that rude about it.

My first name is Jaclyn. My whole life, that’s what my family called me, and to me, that’s my name. “Jackie” is not my name, and yet that’s what people always call me. This kind of conversation is quite common:

Me: Hello, I’m Jaclyn LastName.
Them: Nice to meet you, Jackie.
Me: It’s Jaclyn, actually.

It really pisses me off - why does everyone assume I want a nickname? For me, I call people the same way they introduce themselves. If a woman introduces herself as Jennifer, then that’s what I will call her until told otherwise - I don’t automatically assume that she wants to be called Jen or Jenny.

I used to be shy about correcting people because I felt like I was being rude. If someone asked me what I wanted to be called, I’d tell them, but otherwise say nothing. When I started dating my husband, he encouraged me to be more direct. In fact, he would often correct people for me, so I started doing the corrections myself in order to get him to stop.

It happens in work emails all the time. I work in a small office where everyone knows what I want to be called, but I often deal with people at other companies/organizations, and I frequently get emails calling me “Jackie.” So I reply, “It’s not a big deal, but I prefer to go by Jaclyn.”

The other thing is misspelling. For some reason, this has only happened in the last 5 years, but it seems about half the times I get an email/letter from someone, it is spelled “Jacyln.” I can only assume it’s some kind of typing thing, similar to people typing “teh” instead of “the.”

The first time it happened, I worked in an office where someone typed up the phone extension list and typed my name as Jacyln. I figured it was just at typo, but then I actually started noticing that handwritten notes from other employees were spelling it that way too. Like I’d find a post-it note on my monitor, “Jacyln, can you please take care of the Penske file,” etc. I couldn’t believe that they actually seemed to think my name was spelled that way. How would you even pronounce it?

I get the exact same thing.
Me: Hello, I’m Teresa LastName.
Them: Nice to meet you, Terri.
Me: It’s Teresa, actually.

And I get “Theresa” so often I just set up an alias for my emails so they will come either way.

It’s not yo, it’s nio, and it’s got the same division in Mexican Spanish and in Castillian Spanish. It’s not the number of vowels that marks whether it’s a separate syllable, nio is a dyptong.

Speaking of butchered names, it’s Banderas :slight_smile:

Did anyone else notice the “suggest an alternate name” option in the first link? :slight_smile:

I get that too. :mad:

When I was in the third grade, I decided to try my hand at standup for the school talent show, with a list of jokes I basically stole from those awful pun books you get from the school book fairs. Well, my MOM (who unlike me or my late dad, does not share the burden of a ridiculous eye-talian name), wrote my opening joke: “Hi, I’m Antonio. Not Antonio Banderas, Antonio xyz; I’m much better looking than he is!”

It’s adorable when an eight year old says it, or so I’m told. I still get teased for that one, though. I love my mother, but if her comedic sense was any worse she could’ve written for Reba MacIntyre’s sitcom. :smiley:

Oh, and in case there was any confusion, I pronounce it with four syllables. I studied Latin instead of Italian. TBH (and now I’m going to sound really buttsore), it kind of annoys me when unilingual anglophones suddenly have this bizarre, “Italianesque” accent come out of NOWHERE when saying my name. I won’t say it’s prejudiced (I always give them the benefit of the doubt that they mean well), but try doing that with an East Indian name. Or a Chinese one. Yeah, you sound like racist, or at very least like a dumbass. :stuck_out_tongue:

I understand the annoyance and how it had been building - but I’m sure you got a WTF from “M” after she had been addressing you as “J” for a year and then you suddenly snapped.

My last name is a very common noun that is fairly unusual as an English last name (think “Tree.”) Its direct Spanish translation, however, is an extremely common last name. I live in California, so I spend a lot of time answering to my translated last name, even though I don’t look at all Latino.

It always makes me laugh when people want me to spell it though, since its such a common word and doesn’t really sound like anything else. Anyway, no skin off my back.

I’m a Jennifer, and I strongly prefer “Jennifer” to any nicknames (it’s kind of a lame name to begin with, but at least it is long.) I respond to whatever people call me, though. Usually they figure out that I prefer “Jennifer” at some point.

Yup. I even changed my name to get away from it, but people continue to do it with my new name.

My original birth name was Italian, but not, in my opinion, at all hard to pronounce or remember. It was unusual, but I’ve since met at least 5 other women with this name personally, and seen more in print, so it’s not an out-there name. I - and my family - pronounced it as written with the rules of English language. The placements of the consonants gave every A in my name an “ah” sound, rather than an “eh” sound. And yet, people CONSTANTLY pronounced it with the “eh” sounds, making it sound really nasal and obnoxious.

No matter how many times I corrected folks, I still have first cousins, aunts and uncles who mis-pronounce it.

Strangers would insert a new consonant, which does not appear in the name ANYWHERE, into it, making it another, more common version of the name - but not my own. Again, I don’t know why, and no matter how many times I corrected it, people would still stick that letter in there.

The diminutive my parents chose for my full name (which was 3 syllables) was really ugly, imo. I would ask people not to use it, but instead use my full name, and they would either ignore that, or mispronounce the full name.

So in college, I changed it. I didn’t really feel it fit me, and I was tired of fighting with people about it. So I changed it to something short, classical, and in my opinion, both beautiful and easy to remember. It’s both a common name, but not a currently commonly used name, and I feel it fits me perfectly. However, I chose the male version of the name (yes, deliberately - I like it better, and it’s my name, after all!) and now people constantly insert a "elle"or “ella” on the end to shift it to the feminine version, no matter how many times I insist they not do it.

And to top it all off, none of my relatives except my mother will use anything besides my birth name, since that’s “the name your mother gave you.” Even though my MOTHER has no problem using it, and I’m in my mid-30s and should be allowed to change my name if I wish.

So… yeah. All the time.

Similar situation in my family: My brother is properly “Robert.” Throughout his childhood, his nickname was Bobby. He got older and began using Rob or Robert, but despite that, he’s always Bobby to me. Not because I’m trying to be difficult, but because that’s just hard-wired in my brain…

I’m lucky in that my name is easy to pronounce, but no one spells it right: Rachel, not Rachael. My immediate family call me “Rae.” Total strangers and salespeople try to use “Rach,” but I usually nip that in the bud…

I’m a Jeremy, and I get called “Jamie” more times than I’d like. I don’t think it’s malice though; just stupidity.

People I went to elementary/high school with still call me “Jer,” but I don’t really mind, because that’s what I used to prefer.

I get the same thing.
My name is Kenneth… not Ken, or Kenny..
its also not Keith! I get called that almost as much as my real name.

Its also not hard to spell. I have never seen another (real) spelling other than Kenneth but for some reason lots of people seem to want to change it to Kennith or Kenith??

On the other hand, my middle name is a short 3 letter name but people also want to insist that it is shortened from a long name. (think Joe to Joseph) I have even had people tell me ( when filling out offical papers that require full middle name) that I can’t just put XXX I need to write out my whole middle name. I tell them, thats my middle name and they say “no, thats short for XXXXXXXX.” :smack: I KNOW my name people!!!

Oh my god. My father’s middle name is “B.” Yes, the letter B. It’s not short for anything. And he refuses to put a period after it when he’s filling out paperwork, because it’s not his INITIAL, it’s the whole name. (Even though it IS the initial too, he stands on the principle, and at 65 he’s not likely to change his mind about it now.)

There’s a reason for his middle name (he’s named after his dad’s brother who died in WWI, but my grandparents didn’t like the brother’s name so they just used the letter to honor him) but people will literally sit and fight with him about the fact that it’s CLEARLY “short for something” and not his whole name.

Sheesh.

My grandfather (middle name “M”) was like this too. At one point I found his birth certificate, where it was spelled “M.” with the period. I’ll never know if they filled out the form wrong or he had his name wrong, though I suspect the former.

My name is Madeline, and about half of the men I meet ask “Do you go by Maddie?”. Uh, no, that’s why I introduced myself as “Madeline”. Or they just start calling me “Maddie”.

I loathe that name.

I’ll usually corect them once. After that, I simply don’t hear anything said to “Maddie”.

“Are you ignoring me?” “No, why?” I was talking to you…" “No, you were talking to Maddie. Since my name isn’t Maddie, I didn’t think you were talking to me.”

People used to mess up my name all the time. Eventually, I just picked the least offensive distortion and started introducing myself with it. Made my life a whole lot easier.

The way I see it, it’s not giving in - it’s adapting.

You too? It’s not Rachael, or Rachelle, or Rachele, it’s Rachel. And it’s not pronounced ‘ra-shell’. No one calls me “Rae”, I don’t really have a nickname except for one annoying former co-worker who used to call me Raquel. Getting called “Rach” makes me stabby.

My name is Pamela. It’s not exotic. It’s probably the “Susan” of 1961 :smiley:

Without fail, I introduce myself as Pamela MyLastName, and invariably, people will say “Nice to meet you, Pam”. :rolleyes:

I’m not “butt sore” about it, but yeah, it’s an annoyance. If I went by Pam, I’d introduce myself as Pam. Do these same people say “How’s it hangin’, Dick?” when introduced to someone who specifies their name is Richard?

:dubious:

UT

You can’t really screw up my name here in America. It’s a simple two-syllable Old English diminutive with only one possible slightly alternative spelling. I do get some people asking if it’s short for something else, and lots of silly nicknames based on my name; but I don’t mind.

But you have my sympathy. I have friends with names that for whatever reason are incomprehensible to the public and are constantly correcting people who don’t care what they would like to be called. It’s rude to not pay attention to what someone’s actual name is, or to disregard what they wish to be called (hint: that would be what they introduce and/or sign themselves as). It’s also rude, in my book, to constantly call someone by a nickname for their actual name. This is why I won’t name my future daughter ‘Natalie’ even though I love the name; EVERY Natalie I know gets called ‘Nat’ no matter how much she hates it, and it would drive me nuts.

Not having a common name is no excuse these days. I live in a majority white community but I know tons of people with ‘non-American’ names from a dozen different languages. It’s not that hard to remember an unfamiliar name-word, when you see that person regularly. People…

So these posts about others shortening their names. I have the opposite problem. I go by a shortened version of my name, which is becoming increasingly unisex, but is still pretty masculine. So I introduce myself as monosyllabic-semi-masculine-moniker, then am met with the endless wild guesses about what it’s short for. Dude, just call me by what I said my name was, sheesh.

I used to take claims over the phone and introduced myself as Kay. Dozens of people called me Pam. I even got mail addressed to Pam. Please, how do you get Pam from Kay? Really, I don’t talk funny – at least not THAT funny.
ETA: don’t know if that was “willful” or not…