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jocelyn
Lifestyle

10 of the Best Starbucks Misspellings We’ve Ever Seen

This article is written by a student writer from the Spoon University at Wash U chapter.

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

Starbucks misspellings

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

Starbucks misspellings

Photo by Kaely Gallagher

“My aunt (named Bernadette) got ‘Fat’ written on her cup.”

3. Schumann

Starbucks misspellings

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

Starbucks misspellings

Photo by MacKenzie Gleason

“The best one is probably Menkzie… another was Makinsy.”

5. Erin

Starbucks misspellings

Photo by Erin Donovan

Barista: “Name?”

Me: “Erin!”

Her: “With an E or an A?”

Me (impressed they asked): “With an E!”

6. Helena

Starbucks misspellings

Photo by Helena Lin

“They spelled my name ‘Howlina’… no joke!”

7. Dina

Starbucks misspellings

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

Starbucks misspellings

Photo by Dorothy Kalmbach

“Hello, Dowrathe.”

9. Shelby

Starbucks misspellings

Photo by Shelby Bank

“My name is obviously Shelby.”

10. Hudson

Starbucks misspellings

Photo by Hudson Kaplan-Allen

“Spanish speakers messed it up.”