Fun With Names. (now with 50% more racism)

[FuzzyKitten99]

I went to school with a "Shara" (i'm nearing 28 yrs old, btw, don't know how old you are), so I think it is perfectly normal. Not common, but not unheard of, for me anyway.

[Kiwi]

OH HONEY I FEEL YOUR PAIN!!!!

Where I was brought up, your name wouldnt have even registered as "exotic", beautiful...yes but exotic not really. When you said your name was Shara I thought, wow your name got all that drama? I used to work with a Nirmal and that barely raised an eyebrow!

My name is french (first and last name) despite coming from an almost excluslively scottish family.
Along with that my last name is a popular first name.....

My first name is Chanelle like the perfume, I get Shontelle, Chanella, Chantella, Chantel, Shanel, Michelle, Channel, Janell, Nell, Shan, Snell, Schnell... it keeps going

I also get told at least once a week that my last name is not a "real" last name or someone will ask me from my last name and I will say "my SURNAME is *****" and they look annoyed and say no, your LAST name...
or they hear my last name and call me by it from then on....

[Apallo]

I get misspellings more than mispronunciation, my first name is Bret, with one T. I don't know why my parents had to make it so that i would have to go through life correcting people, but there ya have it. Most common are Brent/Brad/Brat/Bread/Bart. Brat and Bread are usually from people for whom English is not their primary language. My last name freakin sucks. It's common enough, just unfortunate that it rhymes with the plural of a body part . High school with that last name was not fun.

[Golden Phoenix]

I also get told at least once a week that my last name is not a "real" last name or someone will ask me from my last name and I will say "my SURNAME is *****" and they look annoyed and say no, your LAST name...
or they hear my last name and call me by it from then on....

Ugh, i feel that one too, My surname is relatively unusual too andsome people think i'm joking. If i say my nickname is Pepper then it probably gives you an idea of what my name might be (think opposittes)

[Wenchie]

My name is Shay, but I get called Fay, Shane, Chad (WTF??), Sharon, and all sorts of other stuff.

*sigh*

I understand that name hassles. Even when I spell my name, people don't get if half the time.

And my last name is Dutch, so I don't even want to go into how people misspell or mispronounce that...

[dekydrose]

Oh goodness...don't EVEN get me started on the name thing...I'm the first born (of 7-and all other 6 kids have perfectly "normal" names). My parents named me "Xochitl" pronounced so-chee. It means "Flower" in the Aztec language. Since my company has an office in Manila (that's where the priority club office is located), people always call guest relations pissed and suspicious that they're talking to someone outside of America (BTW, IHG is a UK based company) so when they get transferred to me, a supervisor, and I provide my name...one of a few things happen.

1.)They either call me something completely different (that's ok...i will respond to most things that sound like my name)

2.) They try my name and then butcher it the rest of the call, apologizing at the end (again, that's fine...i know my name is odd)

3.) they insist I'm not in the USA and will go off on racist spurts that usually end with me disconnecting the call.

So yes, Shara...I feel your pain.

[Jammer]

As a fellow phone rep you have my sympathies and apologies for those cranio-rectally inverted jerks whose family trees probably don't fork.

The name thing is weird, tho. Wesley is my given name but I go by Wes. I've gotten:
Les (can kind of understand that), West (also understandable, and kind of cool), but Jess (I don't *think* I had a sinus cold that day, but who knows. . .) Wex (), Mitch (yes, he called me that through the call. I gave up correcting on the third attempt) and Flint () and a very nice lady with a name Suk Dik (I kid you not, one of our international accounts) made my day!

[Fiyero]

I have a common name but being one of the few males in the call centre am still the only person with that name.

I think names are funny things, most people take no notice of me giving it, then ask for it if I can't do what they want and want my full name if they are being downright unreasonable. I don't give my full name, and refusing to has lead to demands that they speak to a supervisor on 2 occasions (It didn't help that one of the supervisors didn't see the problem with giving out full names grrr)

I do feel bad for the people with unusual or foreign sounding names - they do get treated worse.

[BaristaGirl]

My name is Sonya. I was named after a great great grandmother somewhere on my father's side.

I get Tanya, Sarah, etc.... etc... I feel the pain. And nobody spells it right; Sonia, Sonja, Sanja, Sanya, Sania... I've even gotta Soyna, on a few occassions. XD I'm just glad my only job where folks had to know my name, I spelled it upside down on a table for 'em.

[trunks2k]

I have several people at work who call me 'Seen'. My name is Sean. Can't entirely blame them, though, they're from India and Asia so the spelling doesn't match the pronunciation to them. Surprisingly, I rarely run into people trying to spell my name s-h-a-w-n.

There's another guy I work with from India whose name kept switching between James and Joseph. His real name is something else, but he americanized it to "James Joseph" for ease of use. Except James and Joseph are common first names and our IT guys put it in backwards. It took us about a month before we realized we were calling him by the wrong name.

[RetailWorkhorse]

Schnell...

"Schnell, schnell!"
"Yes, Sir?"
"Not you, Schnell! Quicker, Quicker!"
"Yes, Sir?"
"Not you, Quicker!"



The Chinese Community (we have a surprisingly large community of Chinese, they almost out number the hispanic and both outnumber the caucasions) tend to call me, of all thing, Soon-Lee (SP?). I think, in the towneship, there's only one Korean family, and the Chinese are calling me, with a Hebrew name, by a Korean name. I find it mildly amusing.

[DarkProwler]

Surprisingly, I rarely run into people trying to spell my name s-h-a-w-n.

I've got the opposite problem. My name is spelled S-h-a-w-n, and everyone wants to spell it S-e-a-n. Even family members on my wife's side spell it that way. I've given up correcting everyone.

And I'm always running into people who can't spell my last name. It's the same as a famous maker of aluminum foil and plastic wrap, and a company that manufactures cigarettes (I'm related to neither, which is a pity 'cause I could use the money ).

[Samaliel]

I think the most "exotic" name I ever heard is Klerwi. She was one of my schoolmates when I was in elementary school. I think the name is Briton.

[smileyeagle1021]

Oh I feel the pain on last names and spelling... I have a very germanic last name... and by that I mean that the germans are smart and SPELLT IT EXACTLY LIKE IT SOUNDS... even in English, I could understand some difficulty in spelling it from being heard (there are only 2 letters that I will accept as close enough before calling you an idiot) but reading it there is no excuse, yet NO ONE can read my name to save their lives

[KMMCurly]

My real name is Kirstie which only occasionally gets mispronounced as Christie ( I had one maths teacher who could not get it right, towards the end of the year the entire class was yelling my correct name when he got it wrong, I had given up long before) but is constantly being misspelled as Kirsty, as that's the common way to spell it.

I'll go through phases when it being misspelled will seriously piss me off but I've gotten to the point where I accept that until I die people will be spelling my name wrong because my parents thought that way looked prettier