Teachers: the names you will never name your own kids

[Sciencewoman]

Originally Posted by maconmagnolia

I also cannot stand names that are a pretty common name, but spelled way too weird.

For instance, I know a Jacob whose name is spelled Jaekkobe. Poor kid. If you wanna go unique, more power to you. But don't give the kid a common name that everyone is going to misspell for the rest of his life.

Too bad my mother-in-law wasn't told this when my husband was born. He has a common name with two of the letters reversed: Jeffery instead of Jeffrey. People tend to "correct" it to the typical spelling. This has caused him to have to have his passport redone, barely in time for a trip to Australia, and to have the mortgage papers on our first house redone. It's just a pain.

Changing the spelling on a common name creates a lifelong nuisance.

[PhoenixAzul]

Originally Posted by Sciencewoman

Too bad my mother-in-law wasn't told this when my husband was born. He has a common name with two of the letters reversed: Jeffery instead of Jeffrey. People tend to "correct" it to the typical spelling. This has caused him to have to have his passport redone, barely in time for a trip to Australia, and to have the mortgage papers on our first house redone. It's just a pain.

Changing the spelling on a common name creates a lifelong nuisance.

See,I feel for your husband. I have a name that has many spelling options, all "correct" (and some wacky).
Tracey
Tracy
Tracie
Traci
Traycee (don't do this to your child!)


It burns my biscuits that people INSIST on spelling my name incorrectly, especially in the face of overwhelming documentation to the contrary. For example: when I was a teenager/college age, I was a municipal lifeguard. I had to fill my timesheets out in triplicate. All spelled TracEY. Nope, all paychecks to TracY.

My current work e-mail is Name@Company.com. Right? So you have to TYPE my first name to get an e-mail to me, but then when you address me by misspelling my first name in the body of the e-mail, I have to question your sanity. I'm going to blame it all on the fact that they're a bunch of computer dudes.

My mortgage paperwork had to be changed because the mortgage company had misspelled my name. Dude, you had my driver's license right in front of you!

The plus side is that this has made me hyper aware of checking the spelling of people's names before I hit send. Grr, etc.

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by PhoenixAzul

See,I feel for your husband. I have a name that has many spelling options, all "correct" (and some wacky).
Tracey
Tracy
Tracie
Traci
Traycee (don't do this to your child!)


It burns my biscuits that people INSIST on spelling my name incorrectly . . . .

And I feel your pain. I have a given name that has more than one standard nickname with more than one accepted spelling, and the one I use isn't the more common one, though it's hardly unusual. I've lost count of how many times people like bank tellers will see my full name and, trying to be friendly and familiar, call me by a nickname that I not only don't use, but that I really don't like being called.

Add to that, there is more than one pronunciation—the "usual" one and the one you'll likely only find in parts of the South and, supposedly, in Scotland. Yes, I have had people tell me that I pronounce my name incorrectly.

The funny thing is that growing up, I knew a handful of other people with my name (or the more common spelling variant), and they all pronounce the name the same way my family and I do. I was in college before I met anyone who pronounces it the "normal" way.

Meanwhile, my brother has a name that isn't but so common and that is spelled differently from the way it's normally seen. He had to have his med school diploma redone. My sister has a name we've never heard outside our family, except as a surname.

And to be clear, our parents didn't change spellings or anything like that. These are all family names that go back generations.