Comments | woe_sis: a lily by any other name

woe_sis

a lily by any other name

Jul 29, 2010 08:15

On the drive home from work yesterday, I heard a segment on NPR discussing the use of an alias, in particular, Starbucks. The piece pointed out that for many folks with ethnic names, the use of “Coffee Names” has become commonplace.

INTERVIEWER: And then you thought up that lots of people use coffee names ( Read more... )

Comments 10

reichmarshall July 29 2010, 15:57:12 UTC

I started going by "Lee" because for some reason it is IMPOSSIBLE for anyone to understand the name "Leland" over the phone.

xinamarie July 29 2010, 18:59:06 UTC

I worked at a travel agency where your name was your login, so if someone else already had your first name as a login, you had to change yours. I went by "Catherine" for three months, since there was already a Christina. It was fun when we had a new Sarah join, but there was an existing Sarah. The existing Sarah's real name was something else, but she had to change her name when she joined since someone had a login with her real name!

And if the other name left in the meantime, you'd still have to keep your psuedonym, since it was your login account. Good times.

But anyway, customers would ask if I spelled "Catherine" with a C or a K, and I kept wondering "Does it really matter? It sounds the same!" Which of course is a dead giveaway that it's not my real name. I was glad to leave that place...

Your comment reminds me of a former employer, too! woe_sis July 29 2010, 19:09:51 UTC

When i was a make-up artist with Toni&Guy Int, they had a similar situation. Well, except the login part. All stylists, artists, et cetera, were known only by first name. So, a lot of folks would have to change their names to something else. We had a couple of Jennifers (one was Gen, the other was Jennifer) and a couple of Julies (Julie and Jacy). i was pretty good friends with Jacy and Gen, so it used to freak me out when we'd be hanging out outside of work and someone would call them Jennifer or Julie...

And they did the same thing at Burke Williams, which is why Laura Holton is Bradie at work.

neecerie July 29 2010, 20:21:30 UTC

Hah. For most of my life my name has been my mothers coffee name since she suffers from ethnic name syndrome.
Even as a 4 year old I was the one who was called to be seated

curiosity is killing the cat! woe_sis July 29 2010, 20:37:03 UTC

... and her name is???

Re: curiosity is killing the cat! neecerie July 29 2010, 20:41:01 UTC

Well she has two. Her legal name is Marion. But she is in person called Manya.

mysterix July 29 2010, 21:48:25 UTC

Hubby has a similar problem. Aussies don't understand his (also Aussie, born and raised!) accent when he says "Ryan". They invariably repeat "Brian, was it?" "No. RY-an. With an R." I get all manner of misspellings on mine (ie, ee, ey, i, grrrr!), and am often renamed "Kerry" or "Kylie" by the more careless nametakers.

ravenvoice July 30 2010, 00:01:55 UTC

I'm always tempted to add an extraneous letter and then say "it's silent" when they look puzzled.

my thing is spell it however makes you happy and makes it so you don't mangle it when you call it out. it bugs me more when people ask me how to pronounce my name.
"can you pronounce, Christine? Justine? Ernestine? OK give it a shot"