Is my name really that uncommon?

arrippa

asasa

theartistformerlyknownas

luckya23 said:

I'm from NY but have been told I have a pretty neutral accent. Mary/merry sound similar if I'm being lazy but in my head they are supposed to sound different. Mary would be m+airy. Mehry xmas. Like Jerry. Marry like Harry, not hairy!

All those words sound the same to me!

emmaaa

I'm also lost on the pronunciation difference in Mary/merry/marry and Tera and Tara. I'm from the South and those are all pronounced the same.

My first name is Mary and never in my life have I heard it pronounce like  Miri, haha!

KytchynWitche

My name is not hard. It's Elizabeth. I go by Liz, because I got really tired of people misspelling and mispronouncing my name.

A former co-worker took to calling me "Izelle". I do not know why. I corrected her a couple of times and then just went with it. It was just the two of us in the office, so she could've called me Frodo and I would've known she meant me.

The priest at my sister's first communion called me Kathleen. That was kinda spooky, seeing as that's the name of my mom's sister who died when she was the age that I was then. The priest was new to the parish, and my mom's family aren't Catholic anyway, so there's no way he could have known.

Another former co-worker (technically my subordinate) could NOT spell our (male) boss' name right despite it being plastered all over the correspondence. She constantly added an "le" on the end (making it feminine), and could not get it right no matter how many times we corrected her. But she also could not get the difference between AM and PM (she was forever emailing our students that the lunch-break would be at 12AM), or remember to add VAT onto the invoice before sending it through to the client. She didn't last very long, but while she was there the other girls who shared my office-unit did a lot of woosah-ing and I took to hiding in the HR office!

I knew a Pauline who was forever correcting people on how to pronounce it. It's like "paw-leen", not "pow-", not "poh-", not "pah-", not "-lyn" and not "-line". You would think that would be an easy one, but apparently not.

It seems to me that no matter what your name is, SOMEONE is going to screw it up. I dunno if that's because there are too many crazy variations or if it's because people are just stupid/lazy/arrogant/assholes.

ShesSoCold

My married last name starts with a Ch but sounds like an Sh. The name itself is weird and cumbersome and I swear it's a typo. I try not to even say it, just spell it. If I say it first, then the correct spelling is "C - H - no S, M -......". We ALWAYS have to do the "No S".

hellosweetie1015

kaitlynmichelle said:

@hellosweetie1015‌ Now I'm dying to know how you spell it! My new married name is very uncommon so now I have to get used to no one spelling or pronouncing that right either. Even our officiant butchered it when she pronounced us, despite our spelling it out for her and writing it out as well. Oh well. Our families found it hilarious!

Caitlan. It seriously has never crossed anyone's mind to try to substitute an "a" for that last "i/y" and I SWEAR when they do find out how to spell it, they say my name differently. They enunciate that "a" unnecessarily hard. 

raissyrais

My name is Raissa. Yeah, it's pronounced like this Rice-A. Now imagine people saying What? Sorry? Come Again? etc etc and look at them fuming while they try to get your name right and still can't after 20 tries. People hear everything from Larissa, Vanessa, Theresa...This one girl just couldn't do it and for 8 months she called me Reese.

steph861

KytchynWitche said:

My name is not hard. It's Elizabeth. I go by Liz, because I got really tired of people misspelling and mispronouncing my name.

A former co-worker took to calling me "Izelle". I do not know why. I corrected her a couple of times and then just went with it. It was just the two of us in the office, so she could've called me Frodo and I would've known she meant me.

The priest at my sister's first communion called me Kathleen. That was kinda spooky, seeing as that's the name of my mom's sister who died when she was the age that I was then. The priest was new to the parish, and my mom's family aren't Catholic anyway, so there's no way he could have known.

Another former co-worker (technically my subordinate) could NOT spell our (male) boss' name right despite it being plastered all over the correspondence. She constantly added an "le" on the end (making it feminine), and could not get it right no matter how many times we corrected her. But she also could not get the difference between AM and PM (she was forever emailing our students that the lunch-break would be at 12AM), or remember to add VAT onto the invoice before sending it through to the client. She didn't last very long, but while she was there the other girls who shared my office-unit did a lot of woosah-ing and I took to hiding in the HR office!

I knew a Pauline who was forever correcting people on how to pronounce it. It's like "paw-leen", not "pow-", not "poh-", not "pah-", not "-lyn" and not "-line". You would think that would be an easy one, but apparently not.

It seems to me that no matter what your name is, SOMEONE is going to screw it up. I dunno if that's because there are too many crazy variations or if it's because people are just stupid/lazy/arrogant/assholes.

Who the hell mispronounces Elizabeth?! It's only one of the oldest and most consistently popular names in Western society.

loveislouder

sarawifenow said:

My name is Sara without the H.

 

I have gotten:

Sarah

Saera

Shara

Saraha

Sera

Cera

 

Seriously? It is 4 letters. Two of them are the same. Say it with me S-A-R-A.

Nonsensical fact of the day:

The Triceratops in the Land Before Time was named "Sara" but spelled Cera because she's a TriCERAtops... get it? It's awesome.

Gustafson28

arrippa said:

Gustafson28 said:

Ugh! Biggest pet peeve! My name is Elissa, pronounced like "Melissa" but without the "M". It gets absolutely butchered in both spelling and pronounciation all.the.time. I get that it's not common but no one freaks out when trying to pronounce Melissa!

That's my name and it gets misspelled all.the.time. The most common is Mellisa or Mylissa (no joke!) Melissa is a common name. How hard is it to spell. 

That is redic! Maybe people are trying to compensate for other people spelling names all crazy.. Or you have had some unfortunate encounters.

KytchynWitche

steph861 said:

KytchynWitche said:

My name is not hard. It's Elizabeth. I go by Liz, because I got really tired of people misspelling and mispronouncing my name.

A former co-worker took to calling me "Izelle". I do not know why. I corrected her a couple of times and then just went with it. It was just the two of us in the office, so she could've called me Frodo and I would've known she meant me.

The priest at my sister's first communion called me Kathleen. That was kinda spooky, seeing as that's the name of my mom's sister who died when she was the age that I was then. The priest was new to the parish, and my mom's family aren't Catholic anyway, so there's no way he could have known.

Another former co-worker (technically my subordinate) could NOT spell our (male) boss' name right despite it being plastered all over the correspondence. She constantly added an "le" on the end (making it feminine), and could not get it right no matter how many times we corrected her. But she also could not get the difference between AM and PM (she was forever emailing our students that the lunch-break would be at 12AM), or remember to add VAT onto the invoice before sending it through to the client. She didn't last very long, but while she was there the other girls who shared my office-unit did a lot of woosah-ing and I took to hiding in the HR office!

I knew a Pauline who was forever correcting people on how to pronounce it. It's like "paw-leen", not "pow-", not "poh-", not "pah-", not "-lyn" and not "-line". You would think that would be an easy one, but apparently not.

It seems to me that no matter what your name is, SOMEONE is going to screw it up. I dunno if that's because there are too many crazy variations or if it's because people are just stupid/lazy/arrogant/assholes.

Who the hell mispronounces Elizabeth?! It's only one of the oldest and most consistently popular names in Western society.

Indeed it is, but I don't know that South Africa counts as Western society. The most common pronunciation error I get is "Eh-LEE-sah-bet". Mostly from people for whom English is a 2nd or 3rd language. I've also gotten "Lees-bet" and "Lisabeth", lots of dropping the initial E, lots of really elongated initial E, S for Z, T or D for TH. I've even heard it pronounced like "Alyssa-bith" (oddly that one was by an Elizabeth and her family). Liz is a lot easier, but it still manages to get mangled.

lovesclimbing

My last name was something like Lowman.  People would always misprounce it lou-man (The way you'd say the ou in ouch or loud.)  It was the most silly absurd thing ever. It's spelled exactly as it's pronounced!  In what world do you pronounce low that way?  

Also, my adviser in college consistently pronounced it wrong.  I'd come in to his office, "Louman, right?" "Lowman."  Next time, "Louman, right?" "Lowman."  I already didn't like him but that certainly didn't help my opinion of him that he couldn't even remember how to pronounce my name right.

raissyrais

Well at least no one's name is La - A (as in LaDASHa) Ugh I can't even...

Kahlyla

raissyrais said:

Well at least no one's name is La - A (as in LaDASHa) Ugh I can't even...

No one's name is La-A; it's an urban legend. http://www.snopes.com/racial/language/le-a.asp

My name's been misspelled my entire life. It's Jaime (pronounced like Jamie), and I can't quite wrap my brain around how it's just literally SOOOO hard for some people. They. Just. Cannot. Do. It. Even my brother in law still spells it wrong (I've only known him for 13 years), but what drives me crazy is people filling out forms. It's like, I'm sitting here *right now* spelling it for you. Just listen to me. It's like they can't make themselves stop thinking they have it and letting their pen get ahead of them. Actually it's much easier now that I live in New Brunswick because I can just say it's spelled like ["I love" in French].

At least there's a pop culture reference out there now. Even if he is, you know, a Lannister...

raissyrais

Kahlyla said:

raissyrais said:

Well at least no one's name is La - A (as in LaDASHa) Ugh I can't even...

No one's name is La-A; it's an urban legend. http://www.snopes.com/racial/language/le-a.asp

My name's been misspelled my entire life. It's Jaime (pronounced like Jamie), and I can't quite wrap my brain around how it's just literally SOOOO hard for some people. They. Just. Cannot. Do. It.

At least there's a pop culture reference out there now. Even if he is, you know, a Lannister...

Good to know And also he's turning to be a not so bad Lannister now!

Kahlyla

raissyrais said:

Kahlyla said:

raissyrais said:

Well at least no one's name is La - A (as in LaDASHa) Ugh I can't even...

No one's name is La-A; it's an urban legend. http://www.snopes.com/racial/language/le-a.asp

My name's been misspelled my entire life. It's Jaime (pronounced like Jamie), and I can't quite wrap my brain around how it's just literally SOOOO hard for some people. They. Just. Cannot. Do. It.

At least there's a pop culture reference out there now. Even if he is, you know, a Lannister...

Good to know And also he's turning to be a not so bad Lannister now!

Yeah, it makes me feel kind of bad-ass now. 8)

I've always like being called James as a nickname, and most of the men in my life use that if they give me a nickname. My mother in law, meanwhile, insists on calling me "J", and I kind of really dislike it coming from her as I feel it just has no personality (andplusalso mother in law issues). I mean, I've always called my brother "Bee" (his name is Thomas)... but don't just call me a letter, you know?

mrscomposer

My full name is Christianna (NOT Christina), and we shorten it to Christi.  I also get Christine and Kristen a lot.

Ugh.  There's about seven MILLION ways to spell Christi.  I get it, it all sounds the same (and when I'm at Starbucks, that's what I say when they ask for spelling), but if you COMMENT about how it's spelled differently than usual, can you please remember?  My old boss consistently wrote it with an 'e', even though the rest of us consistently wrote it without.