Any issues with spelling your name out to people? Even John Smith has several possibilities.
My first name I do it two letters at a time. No one wants to put the E before the I and I watch them struggling, pen hovering as their brains do an override on the I before E except after C thing. Sometimes you can almost hear brain clunking through.
‘She wants the E first, but that’s not right, this does NOT look right, is the preceeding letter a C? No it isn’t’.
At this point they often look back at me. I nod. There’s a sigh, and a shaking of the head as they force themselves to scribble it out. I’ve been told I’m being bloody awkward and I’ve been felt sorry for due to my inconsiderate parents naming me so.
My maiden name I’d say ‘like Badger’.
An English friend with the last name Rizza is doomed to forever say ‘You know, like pizza’
My best bet is handing over an ID and explaining that it’d be easier for them to copy it, but some people seem to find that rude, so I’ll have to explain my name is difficult to spell and so easier to copy than for me to spell out loud.
My maiden name was Polish and unusual enough that we were the only ones in the phone book with that name, so I was always spelling it.
My dad’s first name was Thaddeus. Mom’s is Loretta. We lived on Amuskai Road. Mom’s maiden name was also Polish with lots of consonants.
I spent my youth spelling a lot.
Now I’m married. My last name is a cardinal direction, one syllable, easy-peasy. I still get asked to spell it. My husband has a common name that has 2 common spellings. Our daughter’s name is simple, but also has 2 common spellings.
I share an unusual surname with a well-known fictional family. Which leads people to assume that my real name is a pseudonym. So I just spell it out and say “Yes, like (name), and yes it is my real name” in the hope that the person will just accept it and move on without making a big deal about it.
My first name is not common, and there are multiple correct ways to spell it.
My last name is Mac***** with the second part capitalized.
So, yes, I spell my name out carefully for people all the time, always have. (And my surname still gets written down as Mc*****)
Additionally, my street address is 13 letters long and hard for most people to spell. So I have to spell that out too.
I spell my last name twice for everyone. It has a series of letters that everyone’s inner twelve year old hesitates at. I can hear them thinking “is that what she just said?”. Not it, but similar, imagine my last name is the completely made up Adcock. I say it, spell it, they say something like Adlock?, and I say, no, cock, c-o-c-k. One day I am going to snap and shout COCK, like penis! It’s not a big deal of a name, but people are so squeamish about those four letters in that sequence. Damn. I spell the word cock more than any other word. I usually say, like rooster. But I think that makes them feel even weirder because their mind went right to penis.
I had a lifelong friend get a job in my office and she noticed that I spelled my name a lot when I was speaking to people on the phone and she asked me about it. I told her that this is just the way it is. She thought it was super weird. Growing up with me, that was just my name, so no big deal to her. Then I had a death in the family and she was in charge of ordering the office flowers. She almost busted out laughing when she had the exact same exchange with the florist of saying and spelling my name she had heard me have many times. Right down to the awkward pause and wrong name saying.
I take down a lot of names and numbers over the phone and I always ask the person to spell it, even if it should be obvious. Mostly, that’s because it’s sometimes hard to understand a last name over the phone and so even if it is Smith it could also be Sift or it could be Mitt or whatever. So when I go to look someone up for whatever reason, I’m looking for the wrong name entirely. It doesn’t help that a lottttt of the people I talk to have pretty mushy rural accents or mumble or are nine hundred years old.
I usually just spell mine automatically when giving it out for something. The last name, especially, is hard for people. Even my best friend from grade school who has known me since I was a kid and has had me on facebook (where she can see my name) spells it wrong. I don’t worry about it much.
We told our daycare provider that our daughter’s name is “Sarah, with an H.” It was a delight to see one of her drawings labeled “Sarha” - it’s been a running joke for almost 30 years now!
My last name has a completely unnecessary extra vowel shoved in close to the beginning of the name. I just spell it automatically, often before I even say the name, because otherwise they just have to correct what they’ve written or typed. Yesterday the officer who was writing the accident report ( ) even asked me if my name was spelled correctly on my license, that’s how oddly it is spelled.
My last name is rare, so I always have to spell it for people. I don’t mind. I do think people who give their babies first names that will have to be explained, pronounced, and spelled out for every new person that child meets are doing the babies a disservice.
My last name is 5 letters and the last to letters of my last are “s” & “e”. Should be pretty simple.
But no. My last name is a alternate spelling of a uncommon (but not rare) last name.
The third letter is where my last name differs from the more common spelling. So people are concentrating on the third letter, and then they hear the “S” and “E” when I spell it, but for some reason, they don’t hear “S” “E”…they hear “F” “E”.
So now when I spell my last name…I say the first three letters quickly…then “S as in Sam” and “E as in Edward”
My last name starts with a “V”. I can’t just say the name because almost nobody hears “V”; they hear everything else that rhymes with it. B? No, V. P? No, V. T? I kill you now.
Ever since I was a little kid, I would hear my mother on the phone saying “That’s ‘V’, as in Victor.” I’ve had to carry on that annoying tradition throughout my life. One person, after I had spelled out my name doing the “V as in Victor” routine, started addressing me as Victor (“Can I call you ‘Vic’?”). Sure, hold still while I punch you in the throat. It’s also not a difficult name to pronounce, but people mangle it all the time. Phailed phonics, did we?
In addition to the last name problem, my first name can be spelled two ways (mine is not the common spelling). Nobody ever gets it right. Thanks, mom.
My last name is Swiss and includes the combination “hr” at the end, which rarely occurs in English. People remember that my name includes an “h,” but not exactly where it goes. So instead, everyone moves the “h” up so it’s behind a previous “g,” since the combination “gh” is very common.
I tell them, spell my name the way that looks wrong. If it looks right, you’ve spelled it wrong.
I used to think my name was a PITA until I spent a career in the military. Two names that stand out from that time are a guy I trained with named Sjodin (shuh-DEEN), and an officer with the unfortunate last name of Hjerpe (YER-pee), who was, of course, referred to as herpes, despite being a decent guy. One advantage to having a name that people have trouble with is that I’ve always made an effort to pronounce others’ names correctly. There must be a reading disability name for people who cannot sound out names or any word with more than one syllable.
) even asked me if my name was spelled correctly on my license, that’s how oddly it is spelled.