I give up.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
61

Well, you’d do well at our house, where everyone is Todd. See, a couple of years ago my husband and I were at my dad’s lake cabin. We were having problems with our boat motor and my husband went over to ask one of the neighbors if there was a good place in the area where he could get the part he needed. The neighbor gave him a phone number and my husband said, “Thanks, Todd.” The neighbor replied, “Uh, it’s Dan actually.” Whoops. Ever since, my husband calls every man whose name he can’t think of at the moment “Todd.”

I’ve been called Vicki and Veronica before. I guess because they’re “V” names like Valerie.

62

Nobody can pronounce my surname on the first try (the correct pronunciation is the obvious one, so people usually skip over it to the bizarre and incorrect one); I only bother correcting them if they’re going to have to use it again.

Native Portuguese speakers can’t pronounce my first name at all, unless I totally alter the spelling to a form that would make it unpronounceable in English (change the “H” to “R,” etc.) This comes up more often than you might expect.

Nobody can spell either my first name or my surname correctly on the first try; I only bother correcting them if there’s a really good reason (e.g. if they’re signing me up for something I’ll have to change later if it’s spelled wrong).

I have ranted about this so often I’m sick of hearing myself rant about it, but if I see one more person spell my name wrong in an E-MAIL (as a response to my message sent from an address containing the correct spelling of my name, and signed with another correct spelling of my name), why, I swear I’ll … I’ll …

breathes

Guess I’m not over it after all.

63

pats head

It’s ok, we’re friends here and we understand.

Here, have some rice. Anaamika and I made it.

Wait. . . you probably shouldn’t eat that rice. :stuck_out_tongue:

64

I’m more confused about how to pronounce your last name. Is it Ksssssssss?

65

I feel your facetious pain. :wink:

My name is Stasia, short for Anastasia. Pronounced Stay-zsa - that zsa is pronounced like Zsa Zsa Gabor. I know, it’s a bit of a odd sound, but think of it as a very soft, trailing “j”. Stay-zsa. Because of this, I tend to cut people a lot of slack. But there are still people who deal with me on a daily basis, including some of my in-laws, who just can’t seem to get their tongues around it.

Stay-see-ah is common, STAH-see-ah, Stahja (sounds like Rajah), and, on enough occasions to make it seem more than just a coincidence: Stephanie. I think those are the people who just give up and go to the nearest default name. I must have meant my name was Stephanie, right? Heh. People are funny.

My favourite was one lady, who, having “met” me by phone, asked my name, and I told her Anastasia, did well enough with it until her next phone call to my (previous job) store to ask for me. Since she had heard it from me originally, and got it correct throughout our conversation, I have no idea how she managed to mangle it so badly in all of our future communications. When she says my name, it sounds like she’s saying “honest ta see ya”. Damn.

Often, when meeting new people for the first time, if they look confused by “Stasia”, and I tell them it’s short for Anastasia, they seem to do just fine. That’s an easy to recognise name.

My last manager, for some reason, liked to call me “Annie”. That was… new.

My new manager calls me Shasta.

I give up. :smiley:

I also can’t cook rice.

66

Shhh! Don’t tell her, we need to see if it worked this time or not!

67

My favorite soda.

Doesn’t anybody just call you “Ana”?

68

I met a girl named Malerie. I’m terrible with names. For some reason I could remember that her name is an M name that is similar to one that starts with a V - Valerie/Malerie. Every time I see her I think Veronica, and then realize that Meronica would be a terrible name.

69

My first name is Bernard. There was a girl in some of my 7th grade classes who somehow got it in her head that my name was Michael.

My last name is probably Spanish in origin, mutated by way of the Philippines (my dad’s from there). I’m not even sure if there is a single correct way to pronounce it, but in any case I use an Americanized version.

As for cooking rice, see here.

70

:smiley: I do. But I guess it doesn’t count, since I only know her on the boards!

71

Unrelated, but when I was in school, the first day, the teacher was doing the rollcall. He missed one student.

“What’s your name?”

“Evan Greenblatt.”

“How do you spell that?”

“E… V… A… N… Greenblatt.”

72

leering, offers up a sweaty, crumpled $10 bill

73

Evan often had that effect on people.

74

I am little. I’ve always always been little.

By the time I was maybe 7 and my next sister Margaret was 5, we were the same height. We also had the same color hair and eyes (blonde and brown, so it was striking) and we looked like sisters.

That’s when the battle started. When we were little, we would break off from our parents together. I would take Maggie to the bathroom or to go get a soda or whatever. And just about every time, we would be accosted by strangers squealing about how we were soooo cute and we must be twins. Sometimes insisting that we were twins after being told we weren’t, sometimes calling friends over to gawk, and sometimes asking obnoxious questions.

Nowadays, we don’t walk around together like that, so the battle has altered a bit. Now people just call me “Maggie’s little sister.” I really only correct them if they call me by Maggie’s actual little sister’s name or think I’m her, rather than just having our ages mixed up.

75

That reminds me of how my niece used to call my cousin, whose name is Monica, Harmonica. This from the same girl who used to call the Coborns store Octoberns.

76

:smiley: Yes, I’m from the planet of the Snake-people!

77

I spent my life spelling and pronouncing everything. My first name is Michelle (2-*l * version), my last name was an bit of an anomoly: a Polish name that didn’t end in -ski. My mom’s name is Loretta, and her maiden name was yet another ski-less Polish name. My dad’s first name was Thaddeus (like the Chief in Get Smart!) We lived on Amuskai road - when I googled it, nothing came up but references to that one road - at least not in the first 5 pages.

Over the years, I’ve been called Mickie (which I preferred in my youth), Michael, Mitch, 'Chelle, Mike, and Fred (don’t ask.)

Even when we lived at a fairly simple address, I’d still have to say “Kings Highway, with an s”

Life can be so complicated.

78

Besides 'Mika? :wink: Yep. I forgot that one - it’s more uncommon, however, unless folks see my name spelled out. I introduce myself as Stasia, since that’s what I go by, unless it’s an excruciatingly formal event, where I’ll use my full name.

It happened a lot more at the store I used to work at, where my manager made me a lovely nametag which, because of the unfortunate length of my name, read:

Ana
Stasia

So people called me Ana, thinking it was a two-part name. My new nametag at the place I work now (while not strictly retail work, it’s still a store and a nametag is handy), is lovely, small, engraved… and says Stacia. Spelled wrong. But what the hell. :smack:

79

:slight_smile:

I’m no longer with her, but an ex drove me nuts with name pronuciation. Her name was Andrea. Everyone from her past life put the accent on the first syllable. Everyone from her new life put it on the second.

But what really drove me nuts was how she pronounced the name of the conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. I never did convince her that his name was not Sergio. How Japanese does that sound?

80

Having gotten completely bored trying to explain how say my name, and explain what it means when people start asking, I just use the first letter as a name.

The habit escalated in an online game when, for speed’s sake, a bunch of us just used our initial as a name and I started doing in real life too. It worked out well as the wife’s letter is the one after mine alphabetically.