Feminist Pub 17: The Bluestocking frolics in the fells and fens of feminism

Annie that sounds extremely rubbish.

I don't know Dr - there can be different name problems for men. For instance, the company DH used to work for appeared to have a hiring policy that at least 60% of its staff must be called Dave. For a while, mine had a 40% Mike quota.

Annie and and

My nothing-do-with-feminism-and-all-me-me-me rant of the day.

1. I had two job interviews last week. I though they both went really well, both jobs were awesome for slightly different reasons and I was having happy dreams of weighing up the pros and cons of each and even possibly playing the employers off against each other when then both made me an offer to make sure I got an awesome deal. But: a) I completely failed to get Job 1 - didn't get called to 2nd interview and actually got negative feedback from the interview. This has hit me really hard. b) while Job 2 assured me that the offer was pretty much on the way barring some minor admin details, they said I would hear from them by Wednesday at the latest. It is now Past Wednesday.
2. I have menstrual hormonal rage. Which make is not making dealing with 1) any easier.
3. DD1, who has recently been uprooted from the only life she has ever known and chucked in a new school, new village etc in Y5 appears to fianlly be feeling the impact of the move. Added to this that she, too, is in the grip of hormonal chaos since she is 9yo and entering puberty, she has been in floods of tears all week "but I don't know why I'm crying or angry at everyone, which makes it worse!". Poor kid. Only another 50-odd years of feeling like that ahead of you.
4. See point 2 and apply also to point 3.
5. Tomorrow morning DH has to leave at the crack of dawn for work. He usually works from home. Coincidentally, tomorrow I also need to get DD1 to school for 8am for a school trip, then head back home and help DD1 dress up for (week late) world book day and back to school by 9am.
6. See point 2 and apply also to point 5.

Time for wine and chocolate.

DH has a very short first name and everyone gets that wrong too, even when they reply to emails with his name written in it ...

Several older men in my office seem completely unable to process that women could be, say, Liz OR Lizzie and these are not actually spelled the same, and could refer to two different people. Meaning that if they just type part of the name and don't bother looking at the email properly the mail will go to the wrong person.

I am willing to bet quite a lot of money they don't mix up Albert and Bertie. It's these silly girly names, they are all the same.

I kept my name when we married, but I like the idea of taking a new joint name from the place where you met. Unfortunately, though, Tallahassee doesn't go too well with our first names.

I have a rather long first name too. Usually you can hear their hearts sink when you spell your very short non-intuitive surname, and then their hearts sink even further when you spell your first name.

DH has a very short first name and everyone gets that wrong too, even when they reply to emails with his name written in it ...

You can't have everything in this life. At least you certainly can't have your name right, it seems!

Lol I have a v long first name and could only remember the first five letters until I was about 7yo!

"Are you sure?", when I spell my name.

"Oh, wait, I'm 5 and haven't learnt my own name yet."

(Do they ask your DH if he's sure?)

I took DH's name - partly because back then most women did (I had a few friends who were Dr OriginalName/Mrs HisName) but also mine was a frankly unattractive common name. I didn't realise till it was too late that it had the virtue of everyone being able to spell it and pronounce it. DH's always needs spelling and people can't hear the difference between m and n on the phone a lot of the time.

"Are you sure?", when I spell my name. Of course I'm fucking sure.

My first name and last name, and both DCs' first and second names are Anglo-Saxon and DH's first and last name are both Celtic. Both DCs have my last name as a third/second middle name (I like it because of its history but it's one of those comedy names that you might not want in secondary school), and DH's name as their last name.

Despite all of our names coming firmly from the British Isles every single one of them has an alternative spelling, except for DD's first name and both DCs' second names. I don't think the origin of a name seems to help with the spelling-over-the-phone problem.

Native English speakers even seem to have problems pronouncing my first name sometimes, too. Think pronouncing Caroline as Caroleen.

yy annie

"and how they continue to pronounce it once I've said my own name"

i know the feeling

"hello, i have an appointment, my name is Petula Gordino"

"ah yes, found you, Petula Gardina"

did you just correct my pronunciation of my own name??

Me too, Petula, no-one ever spelled or pronounced by surname correctly. It was so infuriating that I was well pleased to be shot of it when I married DH and took on his (presumably) simple 4-letter surname.

Since then, I have been astounded by how wrong people manage to get even DH's simple name! And after joining FB, where I used both names in order to allow people from pre- and post-marriage to find me, the double-barrelled version really grew on me. So I changed it legally a year ago.

So now I have a double-barrelled name where people can't seem to spell either part, and a first name which is "made-up", so everyone struggles with that too! The upshot is that when people, all poised to fill in a form or input me into a system, ask for my name, I get to enjoy the slight drop of jaw and horror in eye when I tell them my name. They usually blink a bit and ask "um, could you spell all that please?". And, I suspect that when reading my name, no-one has the slightest clue of my cultural background, ethnicity or gender. Adding Dr to the front has made it even more fun. So everyone always seems slightly surprised (if somewhat disappointed) when meeting me in person that I turn out to boringly be very white and very English. And a woman.

When renewing my train ticket a few years ago the guy at the counter baulked at my name (short, foreign, I'm not offended when it's mis-pronounced, but do draw possibly unwarranted conclusions based on how someone pronounces it - and how they continue to pronounce it once I've said my own name) - asked what my boyfriends name was (English, should be easy, yet people still get confused and spell it wrong). Upon hearing it he expressed the opinion that I was probably looking forward to marrying him and getting that name instead of mine.

I was too taken aback to say anything!

I think there's no such thing as an "easy" name. Mine is short but nobody believes it. DH's one is a common English name but I've had to spell it a few times over the phone to call-centres. These days all names are expected and hard at the same time.

i ahve a name that is never spelled or pronounced correctly and if dp and i got married it would be very tempting to change to his easily spelled, pronounced, and somewhat elegant surname. but i'm rather fond of mine so i would almost certainly just keep it or double-barrel though that would be rather clumsy-sounding - not a reason not to do it though. if we had children they would probably have double-barrelled names or the scottish tradition of mother's surname as middle name (haven't thought that far ahead)

I have an anglicised foreign name (that I didn't change on marriage) - I'm not sure it's made any difference to my life although I'm clearly "not from around here", doubly displaced once from Europe to the colonies with awkward vowel sounds removed from said last name (about 4 generations ago) then back to Europe again, with a non-European accent that doesn't match my odd name. The upshot is mostly that I need to spell my surname a lot and people want to know why I left a sunny country to move to the UK. I don't think taking DH's very prosaic English surname would have made any difference, other than making me feel assimilated and slightly resentful.

Fibonacci I have a foreign name. But then I look pretty foreign here. It's another reason not to change name for me.

I didn't even consider changing my name; it is not in my culture to do so. Although sometimes I wonder if my life would be easier without my 'furriners' name.

Annie I meant years, oops.

DH and I discussed using my mum's maiden name as it's pretty historic and our family is full of women so the name is dying out. DH's last name came from his step-dad, who grew up in an orphanage, so has no significance at all. In fact, although his mum 'changed' his name, as in she started using it for DH from when she married (and DH was 5), it wasn't legally changed until he was 19 as he had his legal name, and the name he was known by, and it was getting confusing for things like bank accounts etc. We went with DH's last name in the end, partly because he'd already changed his name a few years earlier, so another change would be more of a pita for him.

If we'd double barrelled I would have had an alliterative rhyming name that was impossible to say, so that was never an option.

I've always used Ms and when I got married we double barrelled so we are his surname-my surname which caused some consternation including a man in the bank questioning whether that was even legal(!) and having to re request all my bank cards as they all got issued as Mrs despite me telling him repeatedly I was a Ms and would remain a Ms.

A commune sounds like the sort of place where I'd go mad. Unless they have lots of walls to keep other people from me.

I spend most of my day thinking how to get away from people.

Anyway I wish we are over this woman's title business. I nearly shouted at someone for telling me why a student might call me miss when they would never address a male colleague as anything but Dr MaleColleague. I don't want to hear excuses. I want them to all fuck off ...

I know a couple who mushed their names together when they got married. It turned into quite a nice name, nicer than either original name, and that's obviously the name the children have. His family HATE it, it's caused massive arguments and problems with them thinking that he's turned away from their family, there's nobody left to carry on the family name, etc. There was none of this handwringing when his sister got married and changed her name. Everyone on his wife's side of the family thought it was a really lovely thing to do, very equal, a nice new name for the start of their new life together.