No, you may NOT mispronounce my name

[tamezin]

Mispronouncing your name is bad enough. Now lets talk but those people out there who respond to an e-mail you sent them containing a signature line with the correct spelling of your name, and they still manage to mis-spell it in the response. I have one of those names that can be spelled with an i ending or y ending. Every e-mail I send out has my signature line, yet I still receive tons of e-mail with the incorrect version of my name. One guy I work with even manages to throw other extra letters in there. It irritated me so much, I started sending him e-mails with extra vowels in his name.

[draftermatt]

It happens to be the same name as a character on a very popular seventies sitcom, and the show had a catch phrase using this name. (Cookies for whoever guesses what it might be.)

"Dyn-O-Mite"? Sorry just a guess.

My last name gets butcherd quite often and too often, I've learned to live with it, but my wife hates it.

My initials are MM so I used to get M&M's jokes all the time.

[TNT]

"Dyn-O-Mite"? Sorry just a guess.

Hmmm... I used to hear that one a lot. Never did figure out why.

My last name is so simple that it's impossible to screw it up. It just can't happen. It's short and simple. There's no phonetic trickiness at all, no ambiguity, no possible alternate pronunciations.

And yet people from Philadelphia manage to screw it up.

[Becks]

My last name gets butcherd quite often and too often, I've learned to live with it

Same here. Maybe I'll just revert to my mother's maiden name.

[CurlyLocks]

I think I mentioned in another post that I have a lot of trouble w/people misspelling and mispronouncing my first name, and now my married name. It's really made me very sensitive to try and spell and pronounce other people's names correctly and it drives me crazy when other people don't even make the attempt to extend me that courtesy! There are even people that I'm related to who still spell my last name wrong after 20 years of marriage!

One time I was in a car accident and the other party was suing me, and sure enough, they spelled my first and last names wrong in their filings. So my attorney filed back to the effect of you've got the wrong person and made them refile everything.

[blas]

I won't even start with my last name, too many people are so braindead that they can't understand that it's pronounced exactly how it looks. No added letters, no adding "stein" on the end. It's NOT Frankenstein, Ok?? Anywhoo..

My name rhymes with Mary, and is a character of a movie who has the ability to move objects with her mind..............I've gotten that a time or two. "So, do you have that telekewhata, are you gonna kill me?"......You don't wanna know the answer to that.

Or the people who think they are so clever and go "Mary bary boo ferry banana fnana fo ...." yeah....lame.

[MadRocketScientist]

My name is Shane. All of my life, everyone calls me Shawn, even after I have corrected them for the 30th time. If I say, "It's like the Western", either I get a funny look, or I get "Oh, COME BACK SHANE! COME BACK!".

I can't win.

[Noelegy]

Oh, argh. My first name sounds like "Know well."

I get called "Nicole" all the time by coworkers and clients. And then coworkers act surprised if I don't answer to it.

On one memorable occasion, a client repeated my name back as "Merlot." I wanted to reply, "And my middle name is Chardonnay!"

[TwoScoopsSciath]

My real name starts with "B" and rhymes with "henna". I have to date been called

--Brahma (I even wrote it down and he STILL insisted I was named for a Hindu god)
--Breanna
--Brianna
--Bruno (I can't make this up)
--Brandy


Sometimes I wish I just been named Betty and had done with.

[BusBus]

My first name is a common one. It has various spellings, but I use the common one. I am always getting faxes and emails at work with my name misspelled *sigh* Not hard, folks.

My last name gets mispronounced regularily. Doesn't bother me much, unless the person has already been corrected. Some of my colleagues call me by the mispronounced version of my last name, so it really does't bug me anymore.

[BookstoreEscapee]

My initials are MM so I used to get M&M's jokes all the time.

My cousin has 2 kids, and both of their initials are MM. Thankfully neither of them has N as a middle initial, but together they are M&M

Not quite the same, and she doesn't mind, but my mom gets called by 2 different names. She normally goes by her middle name, ever since she was a kid (she and her mom had the same name; ironically, her middle name is my first name so now we have the same problem). When she went back to work when I was 11, she everyone just called her by her first name, and she never bothered to correct them. So her family and friends call her A----- but her old work friends call her M---. One day I went over to have lunch with her and we were walking down the hall and hear, "Hi A-----" and my first thought was "Who the heck knows me here?" Turns out it was a guy she knew from high school so he knew her as A-----.

[draftermatt]

I just thought of something else. My mother's maiden name is Gilligan. Honest.

She used to get all kinds of comments

[Drakstern]

I have a really long, really French last name. Since I tend to say my name fairly quickly when I answer the phones, I get a lot of people dropping my first name and splitting my last name into a first *and* last name.

I always think that it takes something *really* special to not only mispronounce my name, but add several letters and drop my first name.

[ArenaBoy]

People constantly butcher my last name but I really don't mind because A. It's a Polish name and B. It doesn't read like it's supposed to sound. I do hate it when people can't get it right when I've told them how to properly pronounce it. I had a history teacher who actually put in a "slut" in my last name. Needless to say I was pissed because she also butchered it 10 other times and this was after I had written it down. On a very hilarious note, when I put my last name in word the spell checker suggests "Lewinski" to replace my last name. Ouch.

There is one family name in my family that is impossible to pronounce when read and impossible to spell.

[BookstoreEscapee]

On a very hilarious note, when I put my last name in word the spell checker suggests "Lewinski" to replace my last name. Ouch.
.

Spellcheckers always want to change my name to "alien".
My brother's name becomes "brain."

I think because people have such trouble with my name, I tend to have an easier time with other people's names. I guess I just automatically pay a bit more attention. As long as I hear it correctly I will generally get it right from then on.