Well, it happened again. Someone made one of the classic mistakes about my name.
Assuming “Blair” to be a woman’s name happens pretty often, and sometimes has “interesting” consequences. When I first joined the workforce, my employer accidentally signed me up for maternity-related insurance.
That wasn’t today’s goof.
Another common error is for people to assume they misheard my name. The most common “correction” is to change it to “Brian.” (I always have to add my name to spell-checker dictionaries so they won’t automatically get it wrong.) Over the years, in addition to Brian, I’ve also been called Blake, Bill, Jim and just a few weeks ago, Cliff.
That wasn’t today’s goof either.
Today was name error number three – the dreaded Extra Letter.
For some reason, people like to add an ‘e’ at the end of my name. It kind of ties back into the first mistake in that the one and only time I’ve ever seen it spelled “Blaire,” it really was a woman’s name.
But Scotte [sic] and I have met on several occasions. He knows me well enough to avoid that mistake. And we’ve traded enough e-mail that he should know the correct spelling. I figure he just made an honest spelling error. It happens.
But the person with the best excuse for that goof is a woman I know named Claire. Aside from the ‘c’, our names are pronounced identically and calling out either of our names will likely get both of us to respond.
According to Claire, the way she spells my name when typing it on the computer is B-L-A-I-R-E-[Backspace]. 🙂