Do other people have trouble with your name?

It's a bad one, but if I have to I have a decent device to fall back on: "Spiegelhalter...Spiegel like the catalog, halter like the top." I'm bailing this name when I get married, btw.

I sometimes get called Lisa instead of Liz, and they like to spell my last name as Stuart instead of Stewart, but otherwise my name is pretty simple.

Just when people figured out how to spell my last name (it did get rather infamous rather quickly - and I hated the 1 a.m. crank calls), I changed it when I got married (I am related, but to him, not her, but I doubt that makes it any better). Now I have to tell people how to pronounce my last name (rhymes with holly), and how to spell it (for the longest time, my stepdaughter thought our name started with the words "Z as in zebra"), because that heads off most questions before they're asked.

'Jeremy' becomes 'jerry' or 'germy' , 'germany' ... 'jer' becomes 'jerry' or 'sher' or 'chair' or 'ger'

My last name is easy to say but frequently misspelled (Richie, Richey, Ricci, etc.). In addition, I often have people think my last name is my first name and refer to me as Ritchie or Rich. Huge faux pas in Britain, practically unnoticed here.

I am usually a bit shocked when someone that I do not know says my last name correctly. The name is Apprille and it is pronounced april. Letters got added many years ago to avoid confusing my uncle and grandfather who had the same name, but the way to say the name remains the same. It only bothers me when someone repeatedly says the name wrong, I don't care if they spell it correctly for the most part. It is a good way to qualify an incoming call as a telemarketer.

People often insert random p's and s's in my last name - I often get "Rompskey" or other names back that I've heard even less than "Romkey".

I tell them "like Italy, not Canada"

I'm amazed with all the Irish around Boston that I have so much trouble with "Shea". Sheeee-aah? they say. "Shea, like the stadium" I say. That helps half of them. Sheeeee-ah indeed.

reality is simple.. it is my real name that people have trouble with. I say it, spell it, and people still get it wrong. they add extra sylables, they use the wrong letters. my real name is Vaughn (pronounced Von), it isn't that uncommon, famous people have a similar name, Moe Vaughn, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Vaughn Monroe. I have gotten responses like Ron, Don, Lon, Bart, Steve, Loren, Roland, Bob and some others. I spell it V, as in Victor, seems common enough, I even use that phrase when telling them how to pronounce it. What was really amazing is one person that sent me something addressed to Zaurghin, after I had spelled my name.

my last name is MacKiernan, which is impossible to get people to spell correctly (hell, even I had trouble with it when I was young). And pronouncing it? forget it. Some of these people have obviously never encountered a name of Irish or Scottish origin. In print, the r and n in "Mackiernan" often get incorrectly kerned together into an "m" making me "Mr. Mackieman."
Now, my first name: my given name is Harold (which is no secret) but I go by 'h' exclusively, even my folks call me h. If I'm dealing with a functionary like in customer service, when you try to tell them your first name is h, they either a) don't believe you or b) think it's really funny. Which gets old. Really. Fast. And, when I introduce myself to someone socially as 'h' they usually get the brilliant and completely original idea to say " Oh, well my name is [insert their first initial here]." And I think to myself "You know, I've NEVER heard THAT one before. How clever you are. Hold it right there while I go get a baseball bat." I don't say it but boy I'd like to. When I still went by Harold (and when I still do because it's my legal name) for some INEXPLICABLE reason, it *ALWAYS* gets morphed to 'Howard' -- WHICH IS A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT NAME!!!

Lisa Sheee-ra: YES! exactly!

People rarely actually have trouble with my name if they think about it... sometimes the "c" is swapped for a "k" or the vowels get munged, but the output is recognizable. The thing that gets me is some people who seem to have the "oh, that's not a standard name, I'm not going to pay any attention to the actual letters in it" switch... their eyes glaze over and, as far as I can tell, they make something up inspired by, but only very loosely based on, the name in front of them. Very puzzling when it happens.

I spell it out, but people don't listen. I thought "Fenton" was an easy name, but my family and I get "Senton" all the time.

"bridge" + "ham" no "e". That's not exactly the right pronunciation but it's closer than people usually get unaided.

Gisselbrecht. I don't even wait for them to ask me to spell it. They mess it up ALL the time. There was ONE time when someone got the pronunciation (which seems totally obvious to me) right the first time, with no hesitation, and I nearly fainted.

Gonyea. That's it. Can you pronounce it? If you heard it pronounce, gone-yeah, could you spell it? So you decide. (By the by, that is the last name, first name is Jim.)

People almost always mess up my name. I use the English pronunciation when I'm in the US, the Spanish pronunciation when I was in South America, and the correct Swedish pronunciation when I am in Scandinavia. The spelling is often messed up -- Jessica Heléne Andersson -- but I've gotten used to it and it doesn't bother me much anymore. I use my 'middle name' (if you call me Jessica I will not know it's me) which also confuses people.

My last name was shortened by my grandfather because people left out all the silent letters. Now it's hip to be ethnic and they put the silent letters back in. Fortunately I don't use it much, but I do use it for a username at work, where the spelling is rather important. For that, it helps that it is 8 characters long, so when people put in too many letters they realize that they must have done it wrong.

I'm often called Janey. Spelling it doesn't help because when I say M they hear N. I guess it's unusual for females to spell Jamey this way. (usually Jamie? I'm not sure.) Anyway, I don't usually bother to correct them unless I plan to talk to them again in the future. I can be Janey for a while. It increases deniability.

My name isn't that unusual, but I've worked with a woman for 9 years who still cannot spell it..but then, I think she is lucky she can spell her own.

Growing up in a small town everyone knew my name..no problem. Then I married into a four syllable family and it was great fun. At times I would get three catalogs from the same company using different variations. (my kids learned to spell it quicker than I did). Then i married again. The name was spelled correctly but pronounced incorrectly most of the time. Now I'm back to the name I was born with. I'm very happy with it and will be sure that everyone spells and pronounces it correctly. I think people are in too much of a hurry or just really don't care about other peoples' names. Most can be pronounced correctly without coaching if the effort is made.

Having an English word as one's name is an incredible bonus, for which I am thankful on a daily basis. No one misspells it, ever. If you ask me to spell it, I tend to do it in Spanish (atche, oo, enny, te, eh, eray) because that's where I'm used to havving problems with it. My first name I'm asked to spell, but mostly people just want to know if it's spelled with an 's' or a 'z'.

My name is Rebecca, and sometimes people ask me how to spell it, Rebbeca, Rebbecca, or something of that nature. I go by Becka, however, and a lot of my friends get onto me because I don't spell it Becca and it confuses them after they finally learned (well, most of them anyway) how to spell my FULL name that the letters are different.

My name gets automatically shortened to "jon" all the time, which I find kinda rude. See the topics on civility.

even though my (real) name is ridiculous, it still bothers me when people mess it up ... once interpreted as LIMAS ...

for some reason - maybe i mumble - people often hear my first name as mick, dick, or rick rather than nick. occasionally my last name (barone) gets morphed into brown

People have enough trouble with "Gilly" - I rarely even try using "Gilana". And no one ever listens when I tell them that Rosenthol is with an "o" - they automatically correct it for me. Argh!

My biggest problem is that my last name is Bruce -- So I'll get asked my last name, say "Bruce" and then hear, "No, your LAST name."

If I say my surname s-l-o-w-l-y and d-r-a-g the s-o-u-n-d out, it serves as a mnemonic- sort of onomatopoetic.

I especially hate it when folks on the Net mis-spell my name because they see it every time I send mail. No excuse! And oooh I hate it when I get spam snail mail addressed to Ted Beatle..

"like provo, utah". the common error (in the northeast) is to fancofy it (canadian-ify?) as "provost"

I have two problems with my first name. Frequently, people who read my name, Frances, see it as Francis and think I'm a guy, and people who hear my nickname, Francie, hear it as Francine. I don't mind the first one - the results can be kind of amusing, but the second one really bugs me, because I hate the name. I also don't like people deriving their own nicknames - some idiot in administration put me on the phone list as "Fran" which is a name I tolerate only from old people and my Irish-American relatives. Oh - and when I traded "Surprenant" for "Selkirk" I thought I would only have to tell people "one 'L'". No such luck. We get a lot of stuff for the Felkirks, Sellirts, etc.

I hate it when people spell my name wrong. It used to get me really pissed off when people said it wrong, but it really doesn't bother me as much anymore.My last name is so easy, but my first name :Þ gaah. People spell my name Alycia, Alysha, Alisha, Alyssa, Alexis(no idea where that came from) and the list goes on. Seeing as my name is really spelled Alicia, pronounced Alisha(ish as in fish) I don't see how hard it is to get the pronunciation wrong, but oh well, I just correct people when they get it wrong.

"Beth Goodman" -- It just doesn't get much easier than that. On the other hand, my SO's last name is "Goodnough" (pronounced good-no). That does get confusing but provides for some amusement.

just ask ron2112.

It always amuses me when people misspell Jennifer, since it's a rather common name and the vast majority of people spell it the way I do. My last name, however, always gets mangled, especially if I spell it. Silly people. It's really pretty phonetic, if not as common as other spellings.

My name is not weird it's Kari Kristina,but my family calls me Kristie. So it does get confusing for people I meet to know which name to call me, also people always spell all my names with a C not a K.

Last name MARINELLI. After complaining about nobody ever getting my name right, my cousin Nikki told me to say "It's "marine" with an el el eye, but nobody EVER gets it and this usually makes it worse. So I just spell real slow and hope I don't have to do it more than twice. I've gotten mail addressed to G. Yarinel. Forget about "Juliet", too--everyone wants to spell it Julia. If they get that it's Juliet, they want to spell it J-u-l-i-e-t-t-e. Oh well. The price of a melodious ethnic name.

When I'm "Glen", the only trouble people have is spelling it with two n's. That doesn't bother me at first, but I must admit after then 5th or 6th time I remind someone it gets a little...grating.
As "Glen", it depends on the crowd... more "normal" people will hear it as "Doug" or something ("no, it's 'Glen', it's a nickname..."), and the geeky-SF-computer-hippie people mostly get it pretty quick. I've been thinking about switching exclusively to "Glen" for a while now, but I haven't really tried it yet.

people only have trouble with my name because i hate it so much.. whenever i have to say it i mumble it so quietly no-one has a clue what it is..

Glen, if you want I could change your SC account to be Glen and replace every occurrence of the word glen with glen (in the entire database!). ...and I'm personally ready to make the big glen to glen switch, just say when. Of course, I still can't stop thinking of Elizabeth as Lee though.

I have such a normal, common last name, and people still misspell it (usually "Louis"), and my first name is not uncommon but I can understand people not knowing how to spell it. But I hate when, instead of asking me, they rename me "Cindy." I am not a Cindy.

Many people often call me "Javier" instead of "Jaime". But I rarely mind about it, so, I think many people believes my name is "Javier".

I picked a name people would remember. Problem solved. Although I do have to spell 'ross' to customer support reps on the phone, I like to think that is because of the poor quality of voice technology.

My name is Brian Webber. People almost always spell it Bryan Weber no matter how many times I explain it to them.

Jaime, if you name pronounced with a "hard J" like Jay-me, or is it like a "h", Hi-me?

My last name is hyphenated and throughout high school I had many, many corruptions of my name. You get used to it. What is most surprising is the number of people who don't know what a hyphen is! (I have to say "dash" to explain it)

People always assume they know how to spell my name, but they don't, so I often get it misspelled. And I often get called by my last/first name when they think it's my first/last name.

When they would ask how to spell- I would just say like in a book.