Dear dimwit on the phone

Hell, my wife spells her name Stacie.
I tell her that's wrong at least every month.

 

My wife's name is spelled Raynae (pronounced Renee)...

I always know we have a telemarketer on the line when they ask for Ray-knee or Rain. Add our last name, and you REALLY know they are guessing.

 

When my niece went out for high school cross country, I called my brother and thanked him on behalf of the industry for naming her Isabella!

 

Is there going to be a bonus for the person whose post breaks 100 pages on this thread?

 

A few years ago, a talented prospect told me that everyone had been spelling his name wrong. They'd been spelling it normally instead of swapping out an O for a Y. Took the kid at his word -- why would anyone lie in order to get their name spelled WRONG? -- and so I used that spelling in several gamers, roundups, and a feature.

Kid plays in the Pac-10 and lo and behold they're spelling it the traditional way.

So now I am the one idiot who spelled it the weird way for all this time.

I really don't know an answer to this -- I can't ask for his birth certificate. If a kid says it's Meghan not Megan or it's Darryl not Darrel, what do you do? It's not like MaxPreps or the coach are worth trusting, and you can't track down every player's mother for every story.

I'm curious how y'all handle this kind of thing?

 

I covered Daunte Culpepper during his senior year in high school in Ocala, Fla. It was a "big city paper" situation ... we had a bureau there but we weren't the primary read in town. For years, his coaches, school administrators and local media spelled his name Duante. When I got around to doing a profile of him, as we were wrapping up the interview, he said, "I just want to tell you that everybody spells my first name wrong."

Apparently, it was sort of the same situation with pro football Hall of Famer Lee Roy Selmon. On his birth certificate, his first name is spelled LeRoy, but, growing up in Oklahoma, he had a strict school-marm of a teacher who insisted "Lee Roy" is two words and, being unfailingly polite, the gentle giant simply said, "Yes, ma'am," and the revised spelling followed him for the rest of his life.

Back on topic: It's hard not to roll your eyes when you see so many bastardizations of common names. They're like tattoos -- done to say, "Look how unique I am!" but actually tell the world that we don't have to take you seriously.

That said, "Kellye" has been a common variant of "Kelly" for at least 60 years. Submitted into evidence: actress Kellye Nakahara, born 1950, who had a regular secondary role on "MASH".

 

Just had the dumbest call ever. We just posted the local tennis results, county high swept by other county high kind of thing. Boys and girls lost.

The tennis coach of losing team calls me RIGHT AFTER it's posted griping about the headline, saying it made them sound bad, and they were trying to get publicity. I was already having a crap morning, and now this.

He wanted me to change it to county team loses to other county team, like that's any better. Jesus Freaking Hell.

 

The NASCAR driver Sterling Marlin, our motor racing writer at the time in Nashville (Larry Woody) insisted that his first name was actually spelled Sterlin. The Tennesean spelled it Sterlin for years, but I have no earthly idea if Woody was right about that..

 

I had the opportunity to tell young Jordan Farmar that at the previous place I worked, we became the first paper to misspell his dad's last name. Damon Farmar (usually spelled Farmer) was a high school star in football and baseball. It took us a few weeks to get it right.

 

Yes, you will win 100 Internets!

 

Becaise we wouldn't want him to do something like make his players better ... [/bluefont]