What's in a name?

[aryanhwy]

This week's Savage Love column considers a letter by someone who's boyfriend has a close female friend and who has been mixing up their names. Reading a lot of the reader responses made me laugh. I'm generally good with names, and don't have slips of the tongue like that, but growing up I was often "Car[olyn]-An[drea]-Sara" to my Dad (just as he, his brother, and the dog were "Scriny" (Scott/Craig/Tiny) to his mom). On the other hand, I can tell when I've been spending too much time at the office -- such as once when we were still in the old building I told Joel was I going to go "to the livingroom" (instead of the common room) to make some more tea, and just the other morning as I was leaving home to head out to the office, I said "see you tomorrow" instead of "see you later", and realized a bit later that the reason I said that was because "see you tomorrow" is what you say when you're leaving work and going home (I'd rather view this slip-up more as a positive comment about how I feel at work, rather than a negative comment about how I feel at home!). I haven't ever called Joel by either of the cats' names yet, but I do occasionally mix up the cats' names and endearments (at which I always feel guilty, since I know Slinky knows the difference between "babe" (her) and "baby" (Widget)).

Comments

[eleyne-de-c.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, while I was at school I did have a very very brief holiday romance with someone who at one point called me by my sister's name. A number of years later they did indeed get together and are still a couple to this day.

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

Did he know your sister/your sister's name when he called you by it? Or was that just a freak coincidence?

[eleyne-de-c.livejournal.com]

He knew it. We were all at a caving expedition together.

[tedeisenstein.livejournal.com]

My sister does the same with me: she has John (husband), Johnny (son), and Robbie (son), and it sometimes takes three tries to get me correct.

I would have thought the ratio would have been 2:1:1 in what she calls me, but it's actually been much closer to 1:1:1. Go figure.

My mother, on the other hand, has had no trouble remembering my name.

[baron-berwyn.livejournal.com]

My sister keeps calling me by her son's name, and vice-versa. And consider the plight of a friend of mine who divorced Katie and married Kathy. Or was it the other way around.

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

My mother got the two of us sisters mixed up all the time. And my father's sister mixes up her brother and oldest son.

[adelais.livejournal.com]

I keep mixing up my kid and one of my cats. Frequently they are trying to occupy my lap simultaneously and both squirming and getting on my nerves and I end up barking at the wrong one.

[holyschist.livejournal.com]

My dad mixed my name and my youngest sister's name up ALL the time (and mine and my mom's less often) long before Alzheimer's. My sister and I never lived under the same roof, and none of us have similar-sounding names.

Some people are just like that with names.

(I mix up the cats' names all the time, but they do not seem to care as neither deigns to respond anyway.)

(That first letter-writer makes me sad, though.)