People spelling your name wrong on emails or fb posts next to the correct spelling

[tenpencemixup]

How do people manage to do this when your name is part of the email address or they write a comment under your fb comments which has your name next to it? It's so infuriating and lazy
A family member who I have known for over 20 years regularly spells my name wrong In birthday cards etc but I find most annoying when she is replying to an email so her answer is under my name and she still doesn't get it right. Or on a fb post where my name is all over the comments section.
My name can be spelt with an e, or without. For example (not my real name)
Helen or helene. My name has the e, and she always spells it without. I wouldn't mind but her name is similar, so ends in an e, like leanne, so I could spell it leann.

I'm another who finds it insufferable. My long name has several possible spellings and my short name does too (and the short-short version!), so I can understand it may be a bit confusing. But when you send out wedding invitations and replies come back with your name STILL spelt wrong, you do wonder why you bother!

I get this with my son's name! I could write a post on FB spelling his name correctly and then half the comments underneath spell it incorrectly. I think it may be autocorrect. My son has a perfectly normal spelling of his name but it isn't the most common one so I think phones and computers correct it.

Thereby s only reallynone spelling of my name but it has a set of double letters that seems to cause real issues. Not my name but think of Vanessa spelt Vannesa, Vanesa, Vannessa etc. I wonder if people who have an easy name don’t see the issue as it never happens to them so the don’t realise how annoying it is. The thing is my e-mail and e-mail signature has the right spelling ffs!

I get it all the time - and it really doesn't bother me.

We have a slapdash written culture - spelling, punctuation, grammar - all dismissed as irrelevant and anyone who picks up a their/there/they're or a could of or an obvious typo is usually labelled a pedant or worse. Lists of "Oh but.. SEN, dyslexia. autocorrect, "bloody phone" usually follow as reasons why the pedant is wrong and should shut up.

It does matter less. We are more visual and respond to icons and images more than to complex writing.

All this means that we simply do not take care or check spelling of anything like we used to. It isn't a form of disrespect but if I type "anythign" instead of "anything" and "your" instead of "you're" - and I don't notice - then why would I proof read to the extent of checking Trisha/Tricia, Anne/Ann/Anna, Emmie/Emms/Emmy/Emily/Emma, Cate/Kate/Katy/Katie.

We are more verbal too - and we are much more likely to "hear" the sounds in our heads than "see them" on the page. Hence so many phonetic spellings. Add in text/WhatsApp-speak when brevity is all and an emoticon replaces a sentence and the chances of getting a name right become slimmer.

I would be surprised if all those who are concerned about their own names haven't dome exactly the same to someone else without realising. It's a declining skill.

Annoys the heck out of me! I used to get it all the time at my last job - every time it was wrong.

I think it's rude. A family member has done this to me my whole life!

It's sheer laziness and ignorance.
A girl I work with is called "Dion" and has been called in emails "Diane", "Don", and (randomly) "Dijon"
I did used to work with a lady called "Imke" (who's name was in her signature) and we had someone phone up to say they had received a spam email from us as he thought it was supposed to say "Mike"

Sorry it's not just me who has to put up this rubbish behaviour. I might start correcting this person by drawing attention to my name by spelling their name wrong too! Or i might just spell it like this HelenE
I do think its hard not to take it personally, as your name is very personal and part of your identity. I'm not a spelling police type person who would correct general spelling and grammar issues as I'm far from perfect but names are different, I think.

Are you me? I could have written that post. Even down to the family member refusing to spell it correctly. No answers I am afraid, but sympathy!

My stepdad married my mum when I was five and spelled my name wrong in every single card etc until I was 18 and they divorced.

Weirdly I saw him again recently and he gave me a Christmas card and spelled my name correctly - I almost died of shock!

I know it annoys me but when I saw this sketch gave up being annoyed by it:

When repeated I consider it rude or arrogant - almost like they know but don't care.

I am, however, aware that it's something I notice easily whereas perhaps some people genuinely don't (my dyslexic non-spelling OH wouldn't probably see it).

Amen to all of this.

Our surname is notoriously hard to spell (and people often assume it should have a capital letter in the middle which it hasn't, but which is a valid version of the name) so I can sort of understand people getting that wrong, although they should probably be able to get it right when they're actually looking at the correct version.

But DH's first name is also not the most common spelling (not just his parents being silly - he was named after a family member) and I'm surprised that people can't remember that, because it's a lot simpler. It has a double consonant in it that not everybody has but it's not unheard of (let's say Garry). When I first met him and found out how he spelt his name, it became something I could remember about him because it was distinctive - "oh look, there goes Garry with two Rs" - and to me it's very easy to remember something like that just because it is unusual. But on Facebook, even if people don't remember, how do they not notice that they've typed his name and it hasn't appeared in the drop down menu of possible people called that?

MsSquiz
It's sheer laziness and ignorance. - And yet later in your post :

I did used to work with a lady called "Imke" (who's name was in her signature)

Case in point. Did you proof read? Probably not. Maybe a software/autocorrect thing or a homophone error, a genuine grammar mistake or a simple typo. That's the point. We have lost the habit and skill of checking. We don't see it as important anymore - unless it concerns our own name!

And the emoticon that followed - was that laziness or simple internet shorthand culture?

Most of us are the same. It is neither rude nor personal.

I have this a lot. I also have a name which can have either an e or an a at the end. Just read the sodding email!

I also have a male version of my name and I get called it, a lot.

If you call me by the shortened man version of my name, I ignore them completely.

I'm a pedant when it comes to spelling, punctuation and grammar so I suppose I do notice it more. I'd never do it to someone else though; I couldn't send a card, email or message with the wrong spelling of their name, it would bug me too much!

I had this with an email exchange in my former role. I used to work for a top level sporting club in the ticketing department. Part of my role was to liaise with other clubs to coordinate away ticket allocations. The club I was emailing was our ‘local rival’ and she had a bit of an attitude about the location of the tickets (they were always given the shit seats, the same with any club she was just being an arse) and kept calling me a name very similar to my own name, but different (Think Sarah > Sara > Sandra > Sally etc). This went on for about 10/15 emails so I started calling her by a Man’s name similar to her own. (Think Michelle > Mike) She soon got the message.

I had a collegue withthe smae name but spelled differntly , so she kept emailing me with her spelling. So my return email went

Dear Vicki-with-an-I
From Vicky-with-a-y

She didnt do it again :-D

Why does this site not spell check sigh

I hate being called Julie with a passion, it is not my name. How hard is it to add the extra letter!!

The site doesn't spell check but nor do many e-mail programs - mine doesn't. Yet we don't take the extra 2 minutes to proof-read ourselves before pressing send or post because essentially speed and brevity are more important than accuracy. As long as the message is reasonably clear we are not too worried.

My own posts and messages are usually full of typos and things I could have expressed better if I'd thought for more than a millisecond about what I was saying.

So if people call me Caroline or Carolyn or Carolynne or Katarine or Katharine or Catherine or Katie or Katy I really don't care.

Haha. I get this so much! I do have a foreign name but it's only four letters and it's an easy consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel combo, like Dani, for example. At work people misspell it so much that my colleagues set up a little column on the whiteboard where they collect the best/worst misspellings. It is annoying because my name is spelled on my email address, you can see it in the "sender" section and it can also be found in the e-mail signature, but I still get emails going "hi Bani/Sani/Fani/Sunny/Mandy". What makes it funny is that I took my husband's British surname which is common AF (think "Brown") and people misspell that too, so they'll be spelling Down/Town/Whatever. It's odd.

My husband's nan still spells my name wrong although I've been around for ten years but she's forgiven because she's nice and she's probably never actually seen my name written down.

In my last job my email address was my first name plus the first letter of my surname - lots of clients thought this was my name and called me the equivalent of Helenep for the rest of my time there’s

I don't find it that hard to check names and spelling, a couple of seconds to just double check someone's signature block or the name against a post. Especially if they have their name in full but sign off with a nickname, e.g., Andrew Brown signs off "Regards, Andy". It generates goodwill in someone when you pay attention to details like that, so worth doing.

DPs name starts with an “I” and people regularly mistake it for an “L” - I guess because a capital “I” looks like a lower case “L”? But who would write their own name starting with a lower case letter?! His actual name is a standard name but if you replace the first letter with an “L” it doesn’t make any sense, yet people still do it!