Seriously, I got an e-mail today from “Joe”, who’d gotten a forward from “Sue” who’d gotten it forwarded from “Michelle”, who’d gotten an e-mail from me.
I signed my e-mail with my first and last names, correctly spelled. Michelle’s added content did not include my name, so she didn’t spell it correctly or incorrectly. Sue misspelled it, and then Joe wrote a message to Sue, which he also forwarded to me, in which he used the spelling she’d used.
Look, I know many people spell my name wrong. I try not to hold it against them–especially since spelling my name with a “c” where the “k” goes results in a perfectly valid spelling of someone’s name–it just isn’t mine.
But it really bugs me when people have an opportunity to check the correct spelling of my name, and type it wrong. Or I got something, I’m not sure if it was e-mail or snail mail, recently where my name was written twice, once right and once wrong. Look, pick a spelling. I’d be happier if you picked the right one, but just pick one.
Ah yes, I hear your pain. I’ve had serious problems getting my name written the way I write it (i.e., the correct way) in every single job - apparently asking “how do you write it” is too hard. I even worked for an American company that managed to lose me every few months, which drove my correspondents up walls.
But every time, I’ve signed my emails with my whole name, and with the firstname the way I write it.
Can I get a Euro for every time someone has replied to one of my emails and called me Naba or Mava or Na?
I get this all the time. It would be a part-time job with no pay if I tried to correct every numbskull who spelled it the way they think it should be spelled, even when it’s there in front of them in black-and-white. Sigh…
My last name is a difficult-to-spell Scots thingy, so I don’t get exercised about the occasional misspelling. I draw the line, however, when they have the correct spelling right in front of them. I was recently interviewed in La Presse regarding certain of my weird little interests, and they took a photo of me; despite that my photo had one of my campaign signs in it (with my name correctly spelt), they still misspelled it in the article.
My last name has five letters in it and ends with L-Y. I cannot tell you how many times I have spelled it out for people, slowly and carefully, and have had them immediately repeat it back to me, X-X-X-L-E-Y. It’s not that hard, people! Really!
I grew up knowing how to misspell your name, long before I met you, matt* – my second grade teacher used the other common spelling of your name, the one that makes you go “AUGH” when you see it! And yet I manage to (usually) get it right.
That has possibilities as a song lyric; wanna collaborate and see if we can sell the results to a boyband?
There are people who have known me for years who seem to think my name is spelled “Sara.” I usually don’t let it bother me, although I do have an almost uncontrollable urge to capitalize both the S and the H, just to try to get my point across.
Both my first name and last name are USUALLY misspelled by people; so consistently that I always find myself surprised when someone actually spells either one right. I recently had someone spell my last name correctly without asking me, for the very first time in my life. It was weird, and now I’m suspicious of the guy who spelled it; he may not be entirely human.
It only really bugs me when my wife mispells my name… I’ve yet to figure out how she can mispell “Tony” and wind up with “Bob”… but she swears its just a typo…
I feel the pain of everyone with an unusual or hard-to-spell name. My IRL name isn’t exactly common, and I get people screwing it up pretty frequently.
I once had a boss who couldn’t be bothered to learn my real name. She had gotten her own messed-up version of my name stuck in that sodden mass of chewed-up bubble gum she called a brain. And, like a thick wad of chewed up bubble gum that’s been left undisturbed for a while, her brain offered quite a bit of resistance to having new things put into it. But, once something was in there, it was stuck for life.
I made several attempts to tell her (politely) what my name was and to get her to call me by my real name. After having no success over about a quarter and a half, I finally quit. (One day, when I’d been working for her for several months–and doing a good job, too–she’d called me over to talk to me. Of course, she used her made-up version of my name to get my attention. Before the conversation could go any further, I looked her in the eye and very clearly and firmly (but civilly) told her what my name was, and I said that it bothered me that she kept calling me something totally different. She shrugged and replied, “I can call you whatever I want. I’m paying you.” I decided it was time to get a new job.)
It bugs me a bit when I get e-mails from students who manage to spell my name wrong. They often send me messages in reply to my e-mails, which have my name fully spelled out in the signature at the bottom and in the “from” field. I send out e-mails to everyone in the class at least once a week. Early in the term, it’s slightly annoying, but it can get genuinely irritating by the time they’ve seen my name in print, right at the bottom of the message they’re replying to, at least a dozen times.
I’ve got a difficult Welsh first name (“Dafydd”); I deal a lot via email with a remote office in the north half of the US.
Email. With my name s-p-e-l-l-e-d out in several locations.
People still flub it. Or rather, the spellcheck on Outlook flubs it. But you think they’d be paying a TINY bit of attention when their system asks if they really meant “Daffy,” and they agree!
I don’t have a difficult name or even one that’s hard to spell, heck it’s a city in France, only four letters. Not all that weird.
But here in the states the more common variety of my name has an S on the end.
Once, when visiting a new doctor for the first time, one of the nurses corrected the form that I had filled out by adding the S on my last name. I caught it when I was checking out but sheesh, did she think I didn’t know how to spell my own name and that she needed to correct it?
As I’ve mentioned on here in the past, my first name is Angelique. It’s got a ‘Q’, you see, and that particularl letter tends to make people’s heads hurt. So, for the most part, I will just tell people my name is Angel.
For just about every year of my childhood where my mom would get birthday cakes from the bakery, the cake would always say, “Happy Birthday Angle!” And now, when I go to Starbucks and they ask my name, I almost always get cups that say, “Angle.”
This bothers me. Mostly because it isn’t like I’m giving them a name that is random and just a name, but the name I’m giving them is also a noun. A noun we use a lot in our society. Plus, the damn thing is five letters, is it really that hard? Angle? Honestly.
My name is weird and no one can spell it. I’m over that.
My story: I graded some tests last week. The tests had a bit about imaginary people named Tim and Jane. Like, “Tim and Jane have got a TV.” “Tim and Jane haven’t got a cat.” Etc. I was incredulous to see how many students misspelled Tim or Jane…they’re right there on the test for you to copy! Where are you even getting this stuff?
Kyla,
I had a math teacher tell us he would take off points for spelling on our math tests. He didn’t used to, but then he got back a “Ture and Flase” test. One assumes that true and false had been written on the test, and even if it wasn’t, how do you make it to seventh or eighth grade without learning to spell those words?
And sorry,Daithi Lacha but I did have to chuckle at your tale. Not least because I used to have a friend called “Astro”. On one occassion, we had dinner with some people who didn’t know us well. Suddenly, conversation stopped as one guy said “what did you call him?” Come to find out, the strangers thought we called him “Asshole”–umm, no. Silly nicknames, yes. Embarrasing ones, not so much.
My last name is only 3 letters long and people nearly always misspell it. The worst example was at a small library (this was in the days that they manually wrote your name into the checkout card) where my mother was checking out 5 or 6 books. She said and then spelled her name, the woman wrote it in wrong, she said and spelled it again and the woman wrote it wrong again. They went through this at least 4 times before the woman realized she was writing it wrong. She said “I was wondering why you kept spelling your name.”
And yet I manage to (usually) get it right.