I like my name. I think Elsa is different but still easy to say, easy to spell. But apparently not easy to read.
Everyday when I go into 24 fitness, they scan my card and give me a new name: Elisa, Alyssa, Elsie...yesterday I was Elise.
All of these names have EXTRA letters in them. I understand not seeing a letter but adding one? That's just making it harder on yourself.
And there's a girl who works at 24 Fitness whose name is Caithlyn. Wait. Did you see that? There IS an extra letter in her name. A random H! CaitHlyn. I'm sure she's grateful to her mom and dad for giving her a lisp everytime she introduces herself.
Now when I say my name the response is always the same: "Nice to meet you, Allison." I used to think that was weird until I worked with a girl named Allison and always thought people were asking for me. They do sound alike. Not that I don't immediately correct them.
My friend Thea is in a similar predicament as you can imagine. She gets "Thee-uh" all the time which I admit is annoying but also understandable. What's not understandable is the response she gets when she introduces herself: "Nice to meet you, Pam." Pam?? When Thea first told me this I thought she was crazy...or deaf. But then I noticed when I would talk about her people thought I was saying Pam!
Now don't even get me started on my last name. Now look what you did. You got me started. My maiden name was hard enough: Weidman, pronounced Wideman. If people acutally pronounced it correctly I just thought they were stupid (or fluent in German which wasn't likely). I mean, it doesn't look like Wideman!
So when I got married I acquired an equally confusing name: Simcik. What? Sim-chick? Sim-chee? Sim-sike? No, Sim-sick. And the name Elsa Simcik is just too S'y, am I right?
I had to call our health insurance provider the other day and after 27 minutes of holding, they finally answered and said, "Who am I speaking with?" Now I need to understand why they are asking this. Are they just being friendly? Or are they going to look me up? Because if they're going to look me up I'll need to spell it slowly. Since I didn't know, I just said, "Elsa Simcik." She kept asking me to repeat it and I kept saying, "Elsa Simcik." Finally, she said, "Do you need an interpreter?"
That's how screwed up my name is! People either think my name is Alyssa Sim-chee or they figure I'm foreign.
Wait till my friend Pam hears about this.
8 comments:
Elisa, you're preaching to the choir! On a funny note, I often use Pam now as my dummy name when I don't want to give some guy at a bar my real name. It's nice because I actually respond to that name after so many years of being mistaken for a Pam.
Pam, I'm glad you're embracing your mistaken name. That's really brave of you.
Christian-It's nice that your first name is Biblical and your last means you're an odd male.
Even I understand this one Pelsa. When I say "This is Mandy" (on phone) they respond "Oh Hi Sandy".?????? So I just act like its my name!
Sandy, as long as we're on the subject, my name is not Pelsa. I just never had the heart to tell you.
With Jessi, they say it right but I know they would spell it wrong. Jessie, Jesse (I'm not a boy)oh, and my favorite Jessy (what the..?). But Jezzaline, that annoys me.
Jezzaline, yours is tough. And I didn't even know that those other spellings were masculine. Thank you for enlightening us.
I do NOT understand how someone could hear "Thea" and think "Pam".
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