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Comment by akavi | Hacker News Reader

One lovely benefit of being an ethnic minority living outside the "motherland" is that you get a large pool of names to choose from that satisfy both the "only one in their 2nd grade class" and "venerable and meaningful" criteria.

The downside is you'll be spelling out your name at Starbucks for the rest of your life and probably grow very tired of saying "No, emphasis on the first syllable, not the last" twice a week. But there are tradeoffs to everything.

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I never understood this.

Starbucks (or other places like it) don't ask for ID to prove the name you give them is actually yours. So why, if it is such a pain using your real name, don't you come up with a name, that is easy for them, that you can use just for when you are at establishments like this?

You are never going to be able to fix the problem on their end, so why don't you do something about it?

The procedure of always responding to "your name?" with "Arjun, A-R-J-U-N", then listening for anything that starts with an "ar" sound is just simpler than remembering to give a fake name and then remembering to listen for that fake name. For me, at least.

Shrug, it's hardly the largest burden to bear.

Go by RJ

No, that's my Starbucks secret, he can't have it!

My name, though not difficult, was seemingly mispronounced or spelled at every lunch and coffee establishment I frequented a few years back. So I took to providing a less-common name beginning with different letters of the alphabet, in order (e.g., Arnie on Monday, Bernard on Tuesday, etc.). It was always fun when someone would be shouting a name from the counter that I'd forgotten was mine for the day.

If you build a better mousetrap, the world will build a better mouse.

What I mean is, my family name is "Strickler." It's easy - pronounced exactly as it is spelled. Yet I get called "strick," "sticker," "strickland," "striker," "stickler," etc. My wife didn't take my name when we got married, with one of the major reasons being "nobody can pronounce your name right." Yes, I've slightly switch topics here to family names over first names, but the issue is the same - doesn't matter if it's pronounced exactly as spelled, doesn't matter if it is a common name or uses standard characters - the problem is that people don't read or pay attention. You could be "Smith" or "Johnson" and somebody would screw it up, so you (or your parents) might as well pick something you like.

I had an uncommon last name, but changed it to Johnson when I got married. I have yet to have someone mispronounce or misspell it, and I still appreciate that just a little bit every time I give my name over the phone.

But we gave our children very uncommon first names so their whole names would be unique.

This is true. My last name is Thomas but people will sometimes refer to me as Thompson, Thomason, etc. I get a lot of people asking how it's spelled,too (even native English speakers).

Happens with first names, too. My wife's name is "Erin"-with-an-E, and she always gets asked "is that with an A or an E?" Really? How many girls are there named "Aaron"-with-an-A? Oddly, nobody ever seems to worry about the genuine multiple possible spellings of Erin/Eirinn/Eireann.

Nobody ever has problems with "Logan", though. I suspect it's just common enough that most people are familiar with the spelling and the pronunciation (thank-you X-Men), but sufficiently uncommon that almost nobody has ever encountered a weird alternate spelling that could cause confusion.

Gonna encourage one of the kids to name their firstborn L'eaughanne!

(Don't worry--they don't do any of the things I tell 'em to do, no matter much amusement it would give me.)

My name is easy beyond belief but people get it wrong ALL THE TIME. You'd think "Jane" is pretty safe, but especially at Starbucks it gets rewritten into a lot of other names like "Shane" or "Jayne" or "Jain". My now maiden name "Lee" is...well...."Li", "Le", "Leigh"..........I think one person almost got my new last name wrong but it was over the phone and a B vs V problem.

Even better is when I was at Disney World for part of my honeymoon. If you tell Disney employees you're celebrating an occasion, they'll give you a button for it - e.g. honeymoon, 1st visit, family reunion. One employee offered to customize my husband's and my very boring honeymoon buttons for us with our names. She asked my husband if he spelled his name (Kevin) "the way you expect to spell it". I got a button that said "with Keven" and didn't have the heart to tell her what was wrong with it.

BTW at my restaurant I used to use names and now I just use numbers. Numbers are way easier to remember and call out, and makes it harder for people to accidentally (or purposefully) take the wrong thing if they can't return the number card back.

>She asked my husband if he spelled his name (Kevin) "the way you expect to spell it". I got a button that said "with Keven" and didn't have the heart to tell her what was wrong with it.

Poor girl. As someone cursed with the inability to spell non-phonetically I'd hate to have to ever write anything without the help of spell check.

It's such a silly thing when you think about it but people will write you off as a moron without a second thought.

My favorite are the typographical issues. My last name contains an I and I often hear L in its place from telemarketers. Makes hanging up on them even easier than it already is.

My name is an uncommon one: "Leland Batey". However, pretty much everyone pronounces it correctly.

I do this. For some reason the "f" sound in "Phil" is nearly impossible to convey over the phone. About 80% of the time my order comes out for Bill, but not 100% of the time, so it's a real pain. I just use "Mike" now. Nice, strong, simple name with no possibility for confusion.

I use Mike too right now. Before I settled on that I tried John but people ask how to spell that. My problem with Mike is that I have collisions sometimes.

Dave is my go-to. Nice and sharp sounding.

Totally - I usually give my nickname in those situations, it's easier for Anglos to handle

HA. My ethnic name can be abbreviated to 3 letters and still be pretty unique (namewise) for those Starbucks occasions.

Solution: don't buy starbucks.

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