LinkedIn recently rolled out a pronunciation feature that you can add to your name to help people get it right. I used it for about a day until I remembered that nobody in 25 years of working had ever pronounced my name wrong. But I can see the use of the idea, and recommend it to anyone who does have this problem.
There is one thing that LinkedIn could help with though.
I don’t blame my Dad. And my Dad doesn’t blames his Dad. For in truth there is not much either of us could have done. We were born with a first name as a surname.
Steve Roy is often confused with Roy Steve. I probably get at least one email a week addressing me as Roy. It takes me back to particularly strong memories of boarding school where amongst other strange practices, everyone was called by their last name.
My early response to these emails was to reply using the sender’s last name as a greeting. But now I go for the more subtle option of just underlining Steve.
In a recent Agile coaching contract assignment I received a number of emails, usually out of hours, asking for some urgent infrastructure work to take place over in the USA. It turned out, following examination of the Outlook address book, that Roy Stevens was in charge of much of this.
That was more a case of mistaken identity but the danger of being too close to somebody on the Outlook address book takes me back to an incident more than 20 years ago. A friend was sending some very detailed complaints about how much they hated their job to somebody in the same company called Evelyn. Unfortunately in those days with people listed by first name alphabetically, and a global email address called Everyone present with send access to all, the email got sent to 500 people.
At a previous Agile engagement with the Football Association, a friend referred to the exclusive club we belonged to: The First Name Surname Club. At the FA we had a number of members including Rob Ray, Steve Clive, Paul George, Jamie Craig, and Mark Gilbert.
In football Luton legend and phenomenally talented full back James Justin, who joined Leicester at the start of this season, has been suffering recently. Twice in recent BBC match reports he has been referred to as Justin James. And last night on Sky Ashley Cole, who arguably himself could be a member of TFNSC, also called him Justin James when referencing the tackle that got an Arsenal player sent off.
Ironically there is a man high up at the BBC who can fix these errors. And he himself a member of TFNSC. He is the great Mike Peter, and despite his Watford allegiances, I know he will want this wrong corrected.
Thanks Peter!