Hi, ho, Silver.
That rhymes with “boys see us”, right? 
I knew a kid named Brad, and one of our teachers called him Bread for a couple of days.
A friend’s mom was Candace, but she once got a piece of junk mail addressed to “Candle”.
Then there was the kid named Geoff, who was solemnly addressed by a teacher as “Jee-off”. Yes, it was a gym teacher. Why do you ask?
My name is Jordan. Not the most common, but while it was quite uncommon when I was 10, it’s been pretty popular now for about a decade.
When people talk to me later, I’m almost never Jordan. I’m Jason. Or Justin. Or Josh.
When people e-mail me, or respond on message boards where my name is in my signature, I’m often Jordon. ARGH.
[Max Gail] Wojciehowicz. You spell it exactly like the way it’s pronounced. W-O-J-C-I-E-H-O-W-I-C-Z. Woe-joe-hoe-its. [/Max Gail]
“Caitlin” is actually a genuine name in Ireland, but is pronounced… “Kathleen”*.
As in, that’s where the name “Kathleen” came from in the first place.
*Though with “Caitlin”, the “th” is actually more of a soft “t”.
There was also a joke once upon a time (which seems to have been scrubbed from the net and the file I found it in somehow) along the lines of:
“You have to right to have your named pronounced however you want. Your name could be Smith but pronounce it John. ‘Hi, what’s your name?’ ‘John.’ ‘And how do you spell that?’ ‘S-M-I-T-H.’”
I get that, too. It’s bizarre.
I’m James. I go by James.
So many people insist on Jimmy. I’ve given up on my relatives stopping with it, but if you’re meeting me for the first time, and I introduce myself as James - not even Jim! - why would you assume I go by Jimmy?
I am a Jennifer, so I feel your pain. I go by Jen, but I’ve gotten variants such as Jin, Jean, Joan, Joanie, Jeanie, and my personal favorite “Virginia,” as in Ginny. But he was old and really sweet and apparently his wife was a Virginia.
Although I think the best mix-up I’ve heard was with a co-worker who had the first name Hathaway (it was a family name I believe). A client apparently asked her “Hiyawatha, can you help me?”
We definitely called her Hiyawatha for a while.
Everything seems to go according to the rhythm at which I spell out my name. My last name has an unusual spelling; the letter everyone gets wrong is the sixth. I used to spell the first five, then the last five letters, but that made people leap to conclusions. Now I spell the first two, then the next four (with an emphasis on the unusual letter), then the last four.
Also, I think my last name gets misspelled much less often now that I live in Quebec. Anglophones assume they knew how to spell my name, and are wrong; francophones are aware they have no clue how to spell it, and therefore ask me.
My name is Rachael. It is pronounced Rachel (I personally don’t see a difference, but apparently people think that the extra A means they should pronounce it Rochelle for some reason.) In conversations I have had people mistake my name for Crystal. In an email I once had someone address me as Richard. :smack:
Some people are just stupid.
I had a friend named Rebecca, she went by Becca (Becky would get you killed), but don’t worry, we found someone that called her Baker over the phone once (come on she doesn’t even sound like an effeminate man, her voice is SQUARELY in the female range, even over the phone). :smack:
I work with one.
My first name is not all that common and is often mispronounced and as often misspelled, sometimes by those who know me well… My last name could be a woman’s first name. When I was applying to colleges, (in the days before the internet) I filled out the form properly, putting my first name in the “first name” blank, and my last name in the “last name” blank, and where a space was provided, I gave my full middle name. I can only imagine what happened in the admissions offices “oh, she must have filled the form out wrong, that can’t possibly be a first name, and look - this must be her first name here in the last name spot” because some of the response letters came addressed to [lastname as firstname] [middlename] [firstname as lastname and grossly misspelled]
I have the same problem. I introduce myself as Valerie and some people assume it’s OK to call me Val. It’s REALLY not. I’m named after my mother - who DOES go by Val - and it doesn’t even sound right to me when people call me that. To my family, I’m Junior. To everyone else, I’m Valerie. Always have been. When my friends shorten it, it’s “V” - still not Val.
Recently, though, I’ve had more problems with people calling me Victoria, Vanessa, Veronica, and there was even one Virginia. I was oddly pleased that they called me by the full versions, even if they were the wrong names.
I get this all the time. My first name is a common girly name, my middle name is a common girly name - my third name is occasionally used as a gender neutral first name but has a thousand year history (we checked) as a surname, so of course I must really be lastname middlename firstname.
And, to add insult to injury, they usually misspell it - as I’m spelling it out.
I prefer to be called Pete even if it says on my birth certificate that I’m Peter. It doesn’t matter. My best friend calls me Peter as does the mother of my daughter. It does annoy me but what can you do?
It can always be worse though. My mother and father and Aunt call me Petie, and
still call me that at Thanksgiving or any other family get together. Pronunciation would sound like pee-tee. Sigh.
I think they do it on purpose now because my family knows it pisses me off.
Me three.
I prefer the non-diminutive version of Robert, for a host of reasons (mostly due to having a number of Roberts in my family-- Bob, Robby, Bobby, Rob, and Robert refer to one person apiece, instead of being interchangeable… I guess the next unfortunate Robert in the family will get Bert). I’ve found over the years that people become really offended if they’re denied the opportunity to apply a diminutive, and those who aren’t offended will simply ignore a request to use my full name. I eventually conceded and gave “Rob” to those who must shorten my name, gritting my teeth all the while.
A few years ago, a woman I’d become serious with asked how I preferred she say my name now that we were “together,” then became offended that I asked her to simply use Robert. Apparently, it was a sign that I wasn’t letting her be an intimate part of my life-- my protests that I prefer my given name and don’t want the versions used by other family members were just excuses to cover the reality that I was going to keep her at arm’s length. Things calmed down eventually, but then she visited me at work, a place filled with “must-shorten-names” coworkers. Who all came by to check out the girlfriend. And who all used “Rob” in front of her. She saved that little bit of resentment up for a week or so…
I spent my school years spelling names. My first name is Michelle, and I’ve gotten Michele, Mitchelle, Michael and probably more I can’t recall. My last name was of Polish extraction, not ending in -ski, but it had a *y *in the middle which was a source of constant problems. Dad’s name was Thaddeus. Mom’s is Loretta. We lived on Amuskai Road. So, yeah, I automatically spell.
My married name is short, sweet, one syllable, easily described as “…same as the direction” and people still go “You mean: <spelled out>” which isn’t too terrible, I guess.
My poor daughter, a recent newlywed and a new teacher, is now dealing with a gazillion kids, parents, and co-teachers offering variations on her new name. One error I can understand is those who pronounce the e in the middle as a long e rather than a long a, but someone came up with a totally off-the-wall version that only matched the first letter. Weird…
My ancestors got tired of people pronouncing the O in my last name the same as the O in “Con” as opposed to the O in “Cone”, so they added an E after the N. Now people mispronounce the name by pronouncing the silent E, “con-uh” instead of “cone”. TANJ.
Samantha has an N in it. I hate seeing Samatha.
My name is not Stephanie. It is not Amanda. It is not Sally or Sabrina or Sarah. It is sure as hell not Judith, and I still don’t know where THAT came from. I got Vanessa the other day too. What the hell? Is my name a fnord of some kind?
My husband’s name - watch out, here’s a toughie -is Doug. At restaurants, while having our name put down on the waiting list, more than once it’s been spelled Dug. Over the phone, his name has been repeated back as Bug. 