It’s 8 am, you snoozed your alarm three times and now you’re rushing to your internship —but coffee is so important that you decide to risk stopping at Starbucks on the way, praying that the line will move with miraculous efficiency. After waiting for what feels like hours, you finally order your regular iced coffee, only to find that the barista has completely misspelled your name.
Even with an easy-to-spell name, I get some interesting renditions, my favorite being “Dame.” These various misspellings have led me to question my every move. Is my voice too soft? Is my barista literate? Do I have an accent? Am I pronouncing my own name wrong? Some of my friends don’t even bother with their own “complicated” names, offering up fake ones instead.
In 2013, Thrillist wrote an article with 23 funny misspellings, so I thought I’d look around to see what I could dig up more recently. Here are 10 of my favorites:
1. Jocelyn
Photo by Jocelyn Gordon
“I was at the Atlanta airport a couple years ago and got this one. Apparently Jocelyn sounded like Johnson!”
2. Bernadette
Photo by Kaely Gallagher
“My aunt (named Bernadette) got ‘Fat’ written on her cup.”
3. Schumann
Photo by Irene Kim
“As a huge fan of classical music, I thought it’d be fun to see if my barista could recognize a common (but not too common) composer’s name. I chose Schumann, and this was what I got.”
4. MacKenzie
Photo by MacKenzie Gleason
“The best one is probably Menkzie… another was Makinsy.”
5. Erin
Photo by Erin Donovan
Barista: “Name?”
Me: “Erin!”
Her: “With an E or an A?”
Me (impressed they asked): “With an E!”
6. Helena
Photo by Helena Lin
“They spelled my name ‘Howlina’… no joke!”
7. Dina
Photo by Dina Guilak
“It was funny at first, but now I’m just kind of over it and usually give them my middle name instead.”
8. Dorothy
Photo by Dorothy Kalmbach
“Hello, Dowrathe.”
9. Shelby
Photo by Shelby Bank
“My name is obviously Shelby.”
10. Hudson
Photo by Hudson Kaplan-Allen
“Spanish speakers messed it up.”