Words and names you confuse easily or often

Another thread in CS brought up the name Hopalong Cassidy and it reminded me that I have always wondered what the origin of that name is, but I also immediately want to call him Hopatcong.

Others I tend to interchange include:

Quanah_Parker is too much like Bonnie Parker (of Clyde Barrow fame)
Lou Rawls and Sonny Rollins
Shelly Winters and Shirley Booth

Doesn’t have to be people. Can be any two (or more) things you tend to swap names for.

And it’s not so much looks, either. There’s a “Separated at Birth” thread going for that type of interchanging.

Chris Rock and Kid Rock

I only know who Chris Rock is, so when I hear “Kid Rock” I think Chris Rock.

This is stupefying. Nobody confused about such things as hypotenuse and hippopotamus and hippocampus? This issue must have been beaten to death in some other thread.

Well I just saw ‘prom’ and my brain read ‘porn’…

“WOO-HOO–Bernie Madoff’s porn night is TONIGHT”

I’d wager that at least 1 out of 5 thread titles cause me to misread at least one word on the first pass. Sometimes, I keep seeing that weird word wrong for several readings until it finally comes across as what was intended. It’s even worse when the wrong word is in the title and makes as much sense as the intended word.

What’s even more embarrassing is when I have proofread a post at least twice and then find (after submitting it) at least one spelling or typing error. The edit function has allowed me to fix most of those, though.

I think I even started a thread one time for the purpose of listing misread titles. As I recall, it got little or no action.

Colin Firth and Colin Farrell (sp?).

One has huge, caterpillar eyebrows and the other is in Bridget Jones’ Diary and Love Actually. I’m sorry – I do not know which is which.

Rosario Dawson and Roxann Dawson.

Homophones when I’m typing. I’ll be typing along and correctly type the phonetic spelling of the word I’m thinking but it’s the wrong word. “they’re, their” “write,right” etc…

Then there are words that are homophones only if you have a regional accent. Having grown up in Appalachia and having** Magiver**'s propensity for phonetic spelling, I sometimes type “are” for “our.” :smack:

Spelling variations of common names abound, but the following are distinct names of people I know:

Maaike Miika Mike Mica Mika Micah

I think they are all unrelated? But it occurred to me that some of them would be hard to tell apart over a bad telephone connection, or if you had a really bad memory or blurry vision.

(Maybe there are other sets of examples? eg Nico vs Neko? )