OMG, correct her. Kindly.
Dear Prudence,
This is a fairly low-stakes question but here it goes. I have a name that is fairly uncommon (at least in the U.S., I’ve heard it’s popular elsewhere). Think something like Malia. There is a woman who I don’t directly work with, but who I interact with in small bursts (think five or 10 minutes at most, once or twice a week in the hallways). We have different jobs, and our jobs don’t directly overlap. Somewhere along the way she got the idea that my name was something like Melissa. I think at the time, the area I work just got a bunch of Melissas and somehow she thought that was my name. I took me over a month to realize that she thought that was my name (again, I don’t interact with her a lot)! It’s now been four months of this. I’ve been debating correcting her, but how do I go about it? It feels really awkward now!
—Not Actually Melissa
Re: OMG, correct her. Kindly.
She liked her name, but also frequently found it frustrating because of how unusual it was. She'd never met or heard of another Malia and neither had any of us in her friend group.
I lost track of her a few years after HS. But the first time I heard one of Obama's daughters was named Malia, I gave a big smile to the universe! And hoped she was doing well and got a kick out of it also.