My name is NOT Shiver!* What does it say? S-I-L-V-E-R. Which spells? That’s right! I realize my name is uncommon, but still, it’s PHONETIC. Read what it says, not what you think it says!
Fuckheads.
examples changed from my real name. Obviously. If this bothers you, imagine a common name and an uncommon name that starts with the same letter and has mostly but not entirely the same letters.
Had a guy coming around to register voters (for the democratic party.) Mispronounced my name. Sorry dumbass, but no, I’m not going to say ‘Shiver’ lives here. Because I don’t know anyone of that name. And then he asked if I was voting Democratic. None of your damn business. (I said ‘I’m voting.’ He kinda paused and then walked away.)
I fucking HATE that. I’ve had salesmen that were trying to sell me a car mispronounce my name after I told them it. I’ve had my temp manager mistype my name when it was IN THE EMAIL I sent her. Do these people now know how stupid and unobservant it makes them look? Do they really think I want to deal with someone who can’t even read a simple phonetic name?!
ARGH.
(I can’t even use my usual retort of ‘there’s no (actual letter)!’ because since I’m working on changing my name I’ve added that letter to the end. And switched out a vowel, but that doesn’t change the sound)
You have my sympathies. I’ve had people respond to my posts on the SDMB and address me as Kayla. This happens a lot verbally (ie, someone reads my name and pronounces it as Kayla), but here they’re typing it, which you’d think would be easier. It’s not as though they’re unsure of how it’s spelled, after all. It’s only four letters, people!
Very weird. I’m not enraged and I’ve never called anyone on it, but it’s happened at least twice and I’m a little mystified.
Hi, I’m Suzanne. About 50% of the time, when I tell people my name, they reply by calling me “Susan.” If they see it written down, about 75% say “Susan.”
About 1% say “Sharon.”
These both used to be very popular names. In fact as a kid I lived between two other Suzannes, and there was a Susan down the street, and we did all go by Suzie/Suzy/Susie. Why is it so hard for people to get the non-nickname form of the name correct?
Silver, I hope it’s ome comfort that I have never mistaken your first name for anything but what it is.
Kyla, Same here. You back in Chi from BFE (BFB?) yet? We really MUST form up a proper ChiDope. Asshole (IRL–online I’m the very soul of courtesy) some people here may think I am, I enjoy your company.
Calm down and get over it. My last name is spelled perfectly phonetic. Yet, people find all kinds of different ways to inventively misspell it. It’s like if you said, my name is Ron Smith, they would find a way to write it Rhon Smythe.
They read the name off of a piece of paper and their mind can’t seem to pronounce it phonetically.
You learn to live with it. Yes, it’s annoying but there are a lot of issues in the world that trump it in magnitude.
My real name got screwed up so many times I changed it (albeit not just for that reason). My username, though, … I chose that. People mess it up (iampuhna and imapunha are the most common, though one person did once manage iamthepunha) enough, including twice for Diary Rescue at Daily Kos.
If correcting them once or twice doesn’t do it, they’re not gonna get it unless they have a better reason to.
So I comfort myself by knowing that I have an intelligence test built into anyone who wants to correspond with me online. Want to chat? I’ll find out right quick if you can spell my name right. If you get it wrong routinely, you might not be that sharp. (Of course, some folks just can’t spell IQ if you spot them both letters, but they’re bright otherwise. But others are just plain uneducated.)
I’m using my real (first) name because if you manage to track me down just through this you DESERVE to do whatever you’re going to do to me. My first name is Jeff. Say it with me, Jeff. Jeffrey is the expanded form. I don’t get too annoyed when you spell it Jeffery, I kind of slur my syllables, I understand that. If, for whatever reason, you spell it Geoffry I can deal, they’re pronounced the same. However my name is NOT Josh goddammit. How the fuck can you screw that up? I can understand if I was NEXT to a guy named Josh, I knew two girls named Shanna and Savannah (which I pronounced more like Svannah) and once or twice I referred to them as each other when they were standing next to each other but I am standing here, alone, no one else has been here except us for the last 15+ minutes and people call me Josh.
My last name, however, is used as a torture device in several small countries (It’s still spelled as it was when my dad and grandparents moved here from Lithuania, but pronounced Anglicized, not that the original pronunciation is much easier to think of. So I’m very forgiving there).
I feel no sympathy either. From Kindergarten through 2nd year of college, I don’t think 1 teacher ever pronounced my last name correctly reading through role call the first time.
Last Name: Eurich (totally German [pronounced “Your-Ick”
Pronunciations I’ve heard:
Eeyore-itch (The Disney donkey + itch to make is sound even more horrible)
E!-u-rich (No I was not rich in any way)
Your-itch (rhymes w/ sandwich)
What was even worse was when it came to other people spelling my name w/o a cheat sheet (Yurik)… I think my grandpa just rolled over in his grave again.
My first name, while by no means unique, is hard to mishear (nothing much sounds like it) and hard to confuse for a similar name. It begins with P.
One woman I’ve talked with at work somehow thought my name was Paul. I know of no document suggesting such.
A man who works here part-time keeps calling me Philip. Again, nobody ever said anything about any Philip.
With my first-name issues and my (now resolved) last-name issues, maybe I should just adopt an interesting number and use that. After all, it’s kind of hard to fuck up pi.
My name is Tina. I get called Lisa a LOT. Once in a while I get a Gina but that is fairly understandable.
I don’t want to even get into my last name. It is very uncommon but it sounds close to a common name. I have had to spell it every single time in person or over the phone. When in person I get a blank stare from anyone that is preparing to type it into a computer. I also have to spell it very slow as well because they already have the common sounding name in their head and get the second letter wrong and then can not find me in the database.
