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I'm sorry you go through this. It's never happened to me but I witnessed it with my sister and a cousin growing up. I used to cringe for them. I think it's incredibly disrespectful to not call someone by the name by which they identify themselves. My name is/can be shortened to a name that I absolutely hate, but for some reason EVERY person has asked me if I ever go by that nickname before just using it and I say "No, I prefer X." I don't know what I would do in a business situation, but I would probably ignore someone that outright called me by the wrong name in a non-business setting. It's just so rude.
All I want to know is, is it just me? Am I overly-sensitive or what? My name is Kathryn. I always, always, always introduce myself as Kathryn. When I'm doing business with people and give them my name, I say it's Kathryn. When I call people on the phone and leave a message, I say that it's Kathryn calling. It doesn't seem to matter one single solitary bit to most people. At least half of them simply assume that I want to be called Kathy. I hate the name Kathy. Yes, I know I can always correct them. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't. It kind of depends upon whether I expect our interaction to be a brief one or an extended one. My beef with this is that I don't see why I should have to do that. If I tell people my name, it shouldn't be all that much to ask to expect them to call me by that name. Do other people have this problem?
I feel your pain, because I have a hard to pronounce name - not actually hard to pronounce, but hard to know how to pronounce based on the spelling - and I corrected people my whole life to no avail. All through school teachers mispronounced my name no matter how many times I corrected them. I really hated it. But I've had a change of heart in my old age. Now I'm the teacher, and I teach only foreign students, and no matter how hard I try I cannot consistently pronounce their names correctly nor even call them by what they want to be called. I mean names like Pichaironnarongsongkramwho and Khongordzol, and often some students have nicknames they want to be called by that have nothing to do with their real names and are sometimes actually harder than their real names (like Sergey who wants to be Jorge or Noon who goes by Ploy). I try, I really do, but I no longer care if Seo-hyeon or Woojin mispronounce my name, so long as they don't mind me mispronouncing theirs. I'll answer to anything. I suggest try cutting people some slack - Kathryn might not be as hard as Pichaironnarongsongkramwho, but maybe some people just have less ability with names than others.
I thought about the situation with my sister some more since posting. I felt so bad for her because not only did she have her name mispronounced, she endured it being misspelled throughout our HS years. Our mother writes with very big "loopy" style letters so all her cursive writing looks like there is an "e" at the end. She signed my sister's paperwork and the front office person interpreted it with an "e" at the end of her name which isn't in her legal name or on her birth certificate. They REFUSED to fix the spelling in the database so everything showed the misspelled name for four years. I guess our mother didn't think it was that big a deal and never bothered to contact the school to rectify it. Then again, she is the same person that gave my sister a birthday party on a Saturday due to convenience and then led the same sister to believe that was her ACTUAL birthday. It wasn't until she ran across her birth certificate in HS that she learned her actual birthday was the day before.
This thread is funny..my name is Kenna...but it is pronounced like KEENA....people pronounce it wrong (think Ken and then Na) and I honestly could care less. They also spell it wrong too. Many times I get official letters that say Keena...I don't care!
Most children learn to read and spell phonetically. They learn that when a word has a vowel followed by two of the same consonants in a row a short sound is used for the vowel. No wonder people pronounce your name KEN NA, not KEENA. Blame their teachers!
My last name is horribly complicated so I cut people slack and don't even correct them if I never see them again.
My first name - I tell them my name is "Evelyn" and some say say "ah .. Eve ...?" and I say "no, E VE LYN!!".
I only had one person then tell me they will call me Eve anyway. And I said, "either call me Evelyn or if that is too much for you, just call me DUDE". Everybody laughs and the person is usually embarrassed. Discussion settled.
Every now and then somebody just calls me Eve and I just don't react to it. People learn quickly.
I've had many people ask me what my name is, Eliza , and if it's spelled Elisa, and if it's short for Elizabeth. Then we have another subject of how to pronounce it, lol
I think a lot of people don't really listen anymore, not quite as tuned in and in the moment, people were more before tech took over their every waking second.
I do agree people should address someone by their name
I am always amazed by people with unusual variants on a name or a name readily and understandably mistaken for another who can't adjust to the fact of their existence and keep complaining when people mistake their special version of the name for the common one. Or where the name is spelled as usual but pronounced differently. Or where the name can't be properly pronounced outside its mother tongue. To me, this is sweating the small stuff. And it's surprisingly easy to go to the court and change your either or both of your names anyway, if it's that big of a deal.
What you're describing stops short of that by quite a bit -- there's no mistaking Kathryn for Kathy, really, and one should assume that if you introduce yourself by the longer version, that's your wish. But some people are lazy and don't want to override default connections in between their ears. Your response seems rational -- correct them if you're going to have extensive interaction with them, let it go if not.
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