let's leave that out when we talk about my attention to detail

[fox]

Because of Reasons, I have been getting my ducks in a row job-hunting-wise, which today involves double checking permission-to-list and contact information for professional references. And here's a boss man from the curling world, who happens to be of Irish extraction, with a McSurname - and I just noticed that his "From:" name on his e-mail and his signature block both spell it "Mcsurname". I think I'm used to MacNames going either way, but McNames not so much because of the oddness of spelling consonant clusters like that; but nevertheless, I've known the guy ten years and have apparently been spelling his name wrong all this time.

/o\

[eta: Vindication! Boss man tells me I've been correctly spelling his name McSurname - the lowercase 's' is AOL's fault, and he can't fix it in the "From:", but he can and has done so in the sig block. My mortification, it is over! \o/ ]

Comments

[mrshamill]

Floccinaucinihilipilificatrix!

[meara]

For the first couple months I lived with Farrah, I kept putting an apostrophe in her last name. I'm not sure why I thought there was one, but there isn't.

[malkingrey]

Vindication! Boss man tells me I've been correctly spelling his name McSurname - the lowercase 's' is AOL's fault, and he can't fix it in the "From:", but he can and has done so in the sig block.

I'd say "damned computers", but I think it's properly "damnmed lazy programmers, who can't be bothered to deal with the fact that there are multiple ways to spell or capitalize some names, and that most people actually care about getting their own or somebody else's name done in the person's preferred fashion."

Himself is one of the "Mac+lowercase" people, and it's always a struggle to get it spelled correctly -- over the years, we've inevitably had to send back the first block of checks for correction every time we've opened a new bank account, for example. And the only place I've ever seen it spelled the right way the first time without prompting was once upon a time in Inverness.

[fox]

The Himself at my house has a double-barrelled last name with a double vowel in the first half. It gets spelled with the vowel only once, with the correct double vowel but no hyphen, with the hyphen but with the first letter of the second half lowercased, and any manner of other errors. And about seven out of ten complete strangers can't pronounce it. Names are certainly a Thing. I'm relieved that I was not perpetrating ignorant Name Stuff on another person!, and full of sympathy for people who endure Name Stuff all the time. (My own name really is Fox, and even that gets misspelled more often than you'd believe.)