My last name is tricky. 5 letters but tricky. Sounds like it starts with an L not an E so that throws people off and there's a Z in there,.

The other day I was trying to do something and spelled my name wrong, and the person didn't understand what I said so I went with "E as in elephant, L as in lion, Z as in zebra, I as in ice, E as in elephant." and I get back "Is it spelled TFGIT?

Because it's pronounced LZ people try to throw an L at the beginning. So when asked for my last name I usually say "I'll spell it for you".

And now I feel like a shit heel because tech support Dean is totally running reports for me because I can't work out how to do them myself. It's not his job. It's not about his application. It's just something he mentioned he knew how to do. We don't work for the same company, and this isn't making them any money.

But we will always have Supernatural.

I'm shocked at how often I'm asked to spell my first name. It's the past tense of draw people. I also get a disturbing number of messed up spellings of my first name, I just boggle. My last name I understand being butchered, it's not common and it was originally gaelic, so it's a mess.

My last name is an oddly spelled version of a common word. I just go straight for the spelling.

ND, I worked with someone who spelled his first name (same as yours) with a "u".

ND, I worked with someone who spelled his first name (same as yours) with a "u".

Was he a fantastically deranged vampire in a Joss show?

We sing my mother's maiden name to the tune of some old song that I can no longer remember because if I try to sing it I end up sing spelling my mother's maiden name! Which is not a particularly hard or complicated name but it is Irish and there are many variant spellings of it (including Nora's last name).

My first name is the Scots spelling of a very common American spelling. I can spell it endlessly (which I do), but people's brains just fill in the blank with the American spelling.

The hyphen in my last name is less of an issue than it used to be but I think I pronounce it badly. Too squishy or something because I end up spelling it a lot.

Two super common names stuck together makes them too complex.

I love retail people's faces when they ask my name and I either tell them just my surname, or I start with my surname and then pronounce and spell "ita". There's usually a look of "fuck you, that's not what I ... oh, good point, what the hell did you just say again?"

Ginger and lcat, thank you so much for the link - I emailed it to Daniel. He won't be able to make use of it for a while, but it is worth checking out. I do agree that the same work with reasonable hours and not spending 2 hours on the road every damn day should be considerably less soul-sucking.