QotD: Repeat After Me…

How have people mispronounced your name? How is it supposed to sound?
Submitted by Lorie.

Strangely enough, on two occasions when I have been speaking to people on the phone, they have thought my name was Martha. I still can’t figure out how Melissa = Martha – I don’t talk that fast and they really don’t sound that much alike. I guess I’ll just blame bad telephone connections. My name is pretty phonetic though so if you see how it’s spelled, you can’t really screw it up too bad.

Now my sister, she has a hard time. While Kyla is not a terribly common name, it has been getting more and more popular in the 26 years that she has had it. She gets stuff like this: Kayla, Karla (her in-laws thought that was her name for awhile so it’s become a nickname), Kaylie and Kylie. I remember when we were kids, someone thought her name was Wyla cuz they misheard it.

People have a terrible time with the spelling of it too – a lot of cards get addressed to her as Kayla, but the best spelling I ever saw was “Kilah” which came from someone who should have known better. I did think that spelling looked cool though – kinda Biblical. But really, her name is pretty phonetic too – I just don’t get how you can screw it up.

Speaking of names, here is a fun site that shows you the popularity of names: NameVoyager. Melissa peaked right about when I was named. There were a couple of other Melissa’s in my grade when I was in highschool (of course we were stuck in a class together in grade nine to confuse the teacher), but soon I lost track of them, and don’t really know any other Melissa’s right now.

Edited to add (thanks for the reminder Sean): About the spelling of my name. My name is spelled the way most (but not all) Melissa’s spell their name. Again, it’s fairly phonetic, and not that hard. That said, if you look at the photo on the right, you will see that a close friend of my mother-in-law’s (she actually babysat Sean while he was growning up) took the time to sew us a lovely commemorative pillow for our wedding.

She spelled my name wrong. Not in an expected way like with two “l’s” or one “s”, but with an “r”.

An “R”!

My lovely wedding commemorative pillow says “Sean and Melisra, June 26,2004″ You’ll notice that my sister’s name is spelled correctly.

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada
This work by Melissa Price-Mitchell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada.
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