My colleague keeps spelling my name wrong. Should I feel insulted?

I have worked in a team for more than a decade, and we get on well. We are friends as well as colleagues. But one of the team regularly misspells my name, and the names of others.

I asked them several times – and now each time – to stop doing this, and they think I’m not serious. I forgave it once, then twice, having corrected them, but now I’m offended. Am I being oversensitive?

Unless there’s a genuinely good reason for it, repeatedly getting someone else’s name wrong can be a form of disdain worthy of reciprocation.Credit: John Shakespeare

I don’t think you’re being oversensitive in the slightest.

Spelling and pronouncing someone’s name correctly is an expression of courtesy in its most fundamental form. It probably sounds like a bit of a cliche, but our names are essential to our identities. Because of that, when spelling or pronunciation is treated flippantly, it can seem like a pointed slight. And, as I’ll get to later, sometimes it is.

That’s not to say getting names right is always easy. Some names are just difficult to get your tongue around. Or hard to spell. Or both.

And when those names are unfamiliar, the difficulty goes up another notch. Unfamiliar names from a language that includes unusual or even unique phonemes (distinct units of sound) are trickier still.

What is even more difficult to understand is what your co-worker gets out of this deliberate sloppiness.

Now, if this is all that was going on in your workplace – someone struggling with your challenging name – then your reaction may be questionable. And even if your name were considered “easy” in your cultural context, your colleague could be easily forgiven if it was an honest one-off (or even two-off) mistake.

But, based on what you’ve told me in your longer email, neither applies in your case.

We’re not talking about someone mishearing your name and then struggling to repeat it or write it down. Your colleague has it correctly spelt and on hand whenever they need it. But they choose not to spend the two seconds it takes to digitally cut and paste it into their correspondence.

What’s worse is that you’ve mentioned it, and nothing has changed. Their idea that you’re “not serious” in wanting your name spelt correctly is an astonishing – and frankly condescending – assumption. Why would you mention it more than once if you were just acting on a frivolous whim?

And even if this is something they can’t identify with – even if they wouldn’t care if someone misspelled their own name – understanding that it may be important to someone else isn’t a particularly demanding test of empathy.

I find this audacity and rudeness baffling. But even more difficult to understand is what your colleague gets out of this deliberate sloppiness – not just with your name but multiple names.

Is it a misplaced sense of control? Is it some kind of malicious joy at feeling, and then emphasising, that you’re beneath them? Or is this just a classic case of false economy, a mistaken belief that the workday is smoother when you just bash out any old spelling in any old context, never stopping to check or self-edit?

Years ago, before Work Therapy, I joked on these pages that you could tell a lot about a person by where they ranked on the Hierarchy of Giving a Stuff. I’ve mellowed since then, but the gist of the article stands. Unless there’s a genuinely good reason for it, repeatedly getting someone else’s name wrong can be a form of disdain worthy of reciprocation.

It’s lovely to hear that you and your nearest colleagues get on so well. And I commend you for forgiving the mistake before it became obvious it wasn’t just a slip. I don’t think you should end your friendship with this person because of this, but I do think you’re right to feel insulted.

I’d love to hear what the response is if and when you mention this a third time.

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