A name is a very powerful thing. It’s one of the first things we learn about ourselves as a child, and becomes a core part of our identity.
For some of us, like myself, it’s not just a core part of my personal life, it’s what I use professionally too. As a result of this, every written communication platform I use to communicate with the outside world – email address, social media usernames, website URL, everything – has my full name, plain as day, “stacyannhayles”.
So it makes me really mad when, in a written response on one of the above stated platforms, someone calls me Stacey.
Are you telling me you couldn’t take the two seconds needed to spell my name correctly? It’s. Right. There.
By not taking a moment to ensure that you call me by name, it sends the message to me that you don’t care enough. And that doesn’t bode well for either of us. Because I will never forget it.
You might think this trivial and petty, but as ask anyone who has a name with slight variations in spelling and they will tell you the horror stories. Unable to cash cheques because the name doesn’t match your ID. Going through application processes twice. Returning certificates and trophies because they won’t be recognized as yours. It is exhausting.
The least you could do is spare a second to check someone’s name. If you’re not sure of the spelling, ask. I promise you, we would much rather (and are quite used to) spelling our names the first time around than going through the consequences after.
Thanking you in advance,
Stacy
PS. There’s a whole entire song lyric that inspired the title of this post. If that doesn’t tell you that this is an epidemic, I don’t know what will.