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